We share with you our recipes, reviews, tips and thoughts on building a happy home together through food.
It boggles my mind that there are countless ads in this country for instant energy drinks, natural energy bars, easy energy tables – but no one gets on a TV and says ‘Eat fresh fruit, you’ll have all the instant energy you’ll ever need’! I guess its just too easy for anyone to ever take it serious. OR, in this capitalistic world we live in, there probably just isn’t much money in get folks to eat fresh fruit - no big corporation needs to process anything and thus isn’t making any money off fresh produce, and the only folks who stand to gain from you eating fresh fruit is mostly the import companies and the actual farmers who produce the food – and who cares about those porr farmers anyways?!
But I won’t go off into a rant about how eating local (or even non-local) fresh produce is the best way to ensure farming remains a viable profession and we don’t end up as a world filled with more machine-produced that nature-produced food. (I’ll save that for another post). What I’ll focus on here is how eating fresh fruit can really help you save money and provide instant nutrition.
Let’s focus on the watermelon today, because this is such an easy-to-eat and easy-to-use fruit that is a breeze to cut at home without spending money on expensive watermelon juices or pre-cut fruit cups. Watermelon, with its dark green skin and bright red flesh, is just such a beautiful fruit to have around the house – whether you buy the whole fruit, quarters of market-cut fruit like in the photo above, or if u’re really laze and go for those containers of pre-chunked melow, having them around the kitchen will be a joy, I promise you!
The bright red flesh will cheer you up instantly, and the water-filled fruit is such a good thirst quencher that it makes a wonderful post-workout snack. The fiber and water content of the fruit will fill your stomach up quickly without weighing you down, and most of the time the fruit is so sweet that you barely will need any additional sweeteners or flavors to make it a healthy and wonderful dessert.
When picking the fruit, one easy tip my tatayya taught me was to tap on the fruit and check for a hollow sound. If it is hollow, and fruit seems heavy for its size, you have yourself a ripe, juicy melon! If you’re buying a pre-sliced or pre0cut watermelon, check for bright, deep red flesh – if the flesh is pale, it won’t be sweet enough, and if the flesh is too dark and appears wilty, it is not fresh enough.
If you end up with a slightly less sweeter fruit, don’t fret! You can still whip up a refreshing juice by adding a little sugar, some fresh lemon juice, and if you’re feeling adventurous adding some fresh ginger into the mix. You will get a fresh push of energy from the juice, without worrying about any added ingredients. And lest you think watermelon is just a summer juice, enjoy a few slices in the dead of winter and tell me you aren’t feeling a bit tropical!