A cold watermelon on a hot summer day is a glorious treat, especially when eaten outside where seed spitting is allowed.
Francis and Janet Hall eating watermelon, 1921
Whoever invented watermelon pickles must have had the bright idea to preserve the memory of this sweet, watery, cold, pink, and green fruit for a dark winter day.
My uncle Francis loved these pickles, so my grandmother kept jars of them in the basement and put the sweet sticky blobs in a glass dish to go along with the big Sunday dinner. But watermelon pickles are a disappointment. They don’t look like watermelon because they’re actually watermelon RIND pickles. And during the pickling process they become translucent and kind of slimy. I think someone should figure out a way to make watermelon pickles so they look like the ones my grandson and I painted on a recent July afternoon.
“Watermelon Pickles,” Carol and Henry, 2014
On Monday: Ellsworth’s Room
When you figure out how to make those pickles you painted please post the recipe. Wonderful collaboration!
Yes, I definitely will. I think they’d look so pretty in a nice big Mason jar.
It is definitely time for watermelon – the paintings by you and Henry completely prove that – colorful, refreshing, desirable! (And sorry, they stir up lust for real watermelon, not pickled!)
You’re right about that. Watermelon wasn’t meant to be pickled. But in those days my grandmother and great-grandmother canned everything they possibly could in order to brighten up the long winter without fresh fruit and veggies.
Your mom looks quite a lot like Aubrey in the watermelon eating pic — especially her relaxed posture and dangling feet
And the watermelon painting is to die for.