Watermelon Cooler

I bought what I considered a small-ish watermelon at the Farmer's Market Friday, and that was a mistake. When I made the purchase, I hadn't thought about lugging it all the way back to my car.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jamelah/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

That was a bit of a struggle. Plus I couldn't do any more shopping once the watermelon was purchased.

It was delicious, though--we munched on it for two days! Even so--and this is always the case--no matter how hard Mr.W and I try, we simply cannot eat an entire watermelon by ourselves.

Instead of letting it go bad and throwing it out, I decided to try making it into a beverage. All the remaining flesh went into a large bowl and I whirled it around with my hand blender. After pouring everything through wire mesh, I was left with five cups of glorious watermelon juice.

This is what I'll be doing from now on. It's that freaking brilliant. It could be used hundreds of ways--I'm thinking a future batch of watermelon margaritas--but I started with a simple cooler, mixed with a cup of orange juice and a generous squeeze of lime.

Yum--it was a perfect sipper for my Labor Day weekend.

A Watermelon Day

I'm feeling rather overwhelmed lately, and very, very cranky.

Dang if it doesn't feel like autumn most days. My parents still have their furnace on at night! Today seems to be warming up nicely--Mr.W might even get some pool time in this evening. Alas, I don't dare take a dip, myself, but I'll get to that in a minute.

Meathead is driving me bonkers. I let her out, and she happily stays outside as long as I'll leave her there. Pickle is usually the one who sounds the alarm that it's time to be let in--I want to make sure they have plenty of time to do their business, you know. I always tell myself, "Self, if you leave the meat outside she'll be good inside." Clearly that's wishful thinking on my part, because she continues to do her naughty deeds in the house. My life can not be all about cleaning up after a dog! And I feel bad scolding her for it, because somehow my dear old grandmother has trained her this way (to use papers--but still, ew). Does anyone have pet-retraining tips to offer? Other than taking her to the vet for a final visit? (Yes, I've considered it.)

But it's the fertility treatments that particularly have me on edge. I've been taking lots of meds that make me over-emotional about, well, silly things, and other meds that make me nauseated. The doc's office overcharged me by $100 and have yet to rectify the problem. And I had a procedure done last week that--well, we're waiting and hoping for a desirable outcome, but won't know until next week. And if all of that weren't enough, I've come down with a cold--lots of head & chest congestion and, because of the possibility of pregnancy, I can't take any meds for it (except Tylenol, which does nothing). So I sit & suffer, sniffle & snot, and cough & pee my pants. (Sorry, but I think we've known each other long enough to be honest, haven't we?)

With all of this going on, as I was tending to some laundry today my blood sugar suddenly started to drop. That doesn't normally happen to me. And there was this lovely watermelon in the kitchen just waiting to be cut into, and I felt it would offer a most delightful solution to my predicament.

I cut into that bad boy, and wouldn't you know half of it smashed right onto my kitchen floor? A few unseemly but no less appropriate words escaped my mouth before I could stop them. And I left that horrible mess right on the floor, too. I was just too mad to clean it up. Do you ever do that?

So I ate my watermelon, ignored the explosion on the floor, coughed & sniffled some more, and told Mr.W that, by God, we're eating out tonight.

Nature's Bounty

A friend passed along to me some of the vegetables from another friend's garden--one giant zucchini, a lovely tomato, and five beautifully red cherry peppers. And if that wasn't enough, I stopped by the farmer's market and picked up this delicious-looking white squash (I don't know what it's called) and a petite seeded watermelon.

Now I know what I'm going to do with that watermelon.

But as for the rest... I'm not sure. So if any of you, my dear readers, have suggestions for this wonderful harvest, I'd love to hear them!

Mrs. W