DECKER MELONS

If you’ve never tasted a Decker melon, I send my condolences---I pity ME as well, sorta, for we just discovered these seemingly only-in-Indiana marvels about ten years ago---a lifetime before, and then the first ten years of our residence wasted on mere cantaloupes, juicy and sweet though they were.

There’s a SEASON to these hefty peach-hued beauties, and it lasts for a blink, in the moment between “It’s JULY!!” and “Where has this month GONE?” They appear in Farmers’ Markets and several fortunate grocery stores, their roundnesses swelling out of the big cardboard floor displays, and those same round contours making it almost impossible to reach WAY down into that waist-high container and heave one up with your free hand.

See this---that’s a quarter. The thing has the general shape and size of a basketball, with MUCH, MUCH more heft, and none of that filigree frou-frou of a true cantaloupe. The two this week weighed in at a little over fifteen pounds between them.

They are worth the grab, the wrestle, the drive-to-wherever-you-find-them. They are a magnificent fruit---great goldish smooth orbs of satiny skin covering the most-juice-per-ounce of any fruit save a home-grown tomato.

You nestle the big ball into the car, cradling it gently into the backseat---I swear, if the season lasted longer, there'd be folks buying them their own carseats. And you’ll take it into the house two-armed, careful of bumps and bruises, fearful of the loss of a single bright bite of this unusual delicacy.


Onto the counter, and you’ll have to force yourself to stow the milk and ice cream into their cool places before you lay knife to this lovely treat---the smooooth of it, the promise of the fleeting delights to come are like few other anticipations. Better place it on a big tray, for a cutting board will be flooded before you can finish your task. A long knife centered, a surprisingly-gentle yield to the blade, and a soft thunch, somewhere between a crack and a sigh, and it breaks with the force of the great golden weight within, yielding up its treasure.

The scent wafts into the kitchen, the colors gleam in any light, and if you can force yourself to cut a slice, peel it, and then eat it with a mannerly fork---you’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din. A quick hack for a juicy mouthful, brimming lips curving into a smile matching the moons you’re going to carve. WHERE HAS THIS BEENN ALL YOUR LIFE?!

A gentle spoon-scrape to remove the seeds, and you’re THERE.

Deckers are decidedly hard to peel---not from toughness, as so many squashes and melons are. They have their own problems: the flesh is so very tender and yielding, it’s very difficult to separate peel from fruit without making decided finger-scallops in the delicate meat. This is Bib-Fruit, folks.

But once cut---moonsmiles or chunks (we prefer chunks, cut into a big flat rectangular Tupperware---it’s just SO EASY to flip that handy lid and extract a few with an eager fork, foraging for a moment, chewing great juicy mouthfuls (oh-so-careful not to touch another single hunk than the one you’re spearing, of course). We take a bowl to the fridge, clump out a dozen, and sit down to dessert, a break, a refreshing cool pause in the day.

And in their last days, when the slump overtakes them, and a great weep of juice has leaked into the bowl, though NOTHING is ever needed to improve their flavor, give them a suitable farewell by tossing all that's left into the blender with a tot of rum or vodka---a perfect sendoff to a perfect Summer taste.

I just cannot tell you of all the delights of a Decker Melon, that Brigadoon-Fruit with the lifespan of a bubble---they’re sweet and smooth and the most delicious of all melons that there are. I don’t know if they grow anywhere but here, and the season truly is RIGHT NOW, but I hope you get to taste one.

And not just once---for somehow I always think that the addictive enticements of Goblin Market were nothing but Decker Melons.

SHE KNOWS ME WELL

It's getting VERY close to the 500th post, and I'm going to turn the helm over today to my VERY Dear Daughter-in-Law, whose business trip to Washington took her to several nice restaurants.

She knows all about my proclivity for snapping pictures of all the food and table settings right before we sit down, so I was happy (and not surprised) to receive this e-mail:

I hope you all are well. I wanted to write you to tell you about dinner tonight. You are about the only one I know who would appreciate how pretty and good it was. I know you aren't crazy about seafood, but when you are right here on the water, well you have to eat some of it! I love Maryland crab cakes. I guess it was the years of coming to Baltimore for work that got me hooked on them.

We went downstairs to the restaurant here in the hotel/resort. You cross a little bridge to get to the hostess stand. After a few minutes, we were seated. The menu was simple but pricey; good thing it isn't my money! I ordered a crab cake for my appetizer. They brought some warm crusty bread with chive butter...yum!

The crab cake came on a long rectangular plate. It was only one, but nice-sized... probably 2 inches in diameter. It had a smear of something--- not sure what it was exactly. It was orange and about the consistency of cream cheese. I thought it would be spicy because I could see some kind of spice, but it wasn't. Actually it didn't have much of taste or I didn't think so anyway. There were some drops of a beige sauce. It was mayo-based, I think and it was perfect to dip the crab cake in. On the far right was a pile of slivers of carrots and some greens things, but they had been dried out (and they were curly). It was so pretty, I almost got my camera out to take a picture, but I didn't 'cause the restaurant was full.

I ordered "diver scallops" as my main course. It came on a round plate with 5 scallops around the outside, which were warm and nicely browned, with greens in the middle. It was good, even though I think it was dandelion greens (that is what they looked like). There was also a half of a lemon with the screen cloth and a pretty bow. The vinaigrette on the salad was very light and the lemon I squeezed on it was good, too. The scallops were perfectly done and practically melted in your mouth.

Then at the end, the waiter brought a beautiful white and red dish (it was on a pedestal -- it reminded me of a dish you would use to serve nuts or something like that) with blue cotton candy! I was so surprised. There was a table across the way that I had seen with some ( or what I thought was cotton candy), but there were kids at that table so I figured it was on the dessert menu and they had ordered it. I ate a couple of bites just to say I had experienced the whole package!

All in all, it was a very enjoyable dinner. See you tomorrow!

Isn't she sweet? I'm keeping her FOREVER!

SUMMER SUPPER

Last night we had brimming bowlsful of deep red, juicy tomatoes, straight from the vines in the back yard. They were picked within ten minutes of serving, as the country-fried pork steaks sizzled and the pot of field-peas-with-snaps and tiny okra pods steamed to firm-but-soft perfection.

A tiny pan of gold-meal cornbread---a little twinking of a packet-mix with an egg and a little sugar and flour---baked tender and moist, with a tiny pat of butter laid into the wedge on Chris’ plate. Slices of crisp-cold sweet onion, thick-walled and juicy, just lying idly on the plate for tiny nips between bites.

The tomatoes---peeled dripping for him and sliced into thick rounds in a bowl, salted gently and topped with a little spoonclop of Blue Plate---mine just cut as-they-were into odd-shaped chunks onto my plate and salted. He likes the final moment of making that perfect tomato salad at table---the age-old movements as fork-and-knife cross and clink and scrape in that enticing dance as the pieces fall into that indescribable amalgam of pure fresh tomato, salt, and the tiny rivulets of white as the dressing makes itself.

My cooking is so erratic these hot days---we’ll pick up Chinese, or pick up a Sam’s chicken as often as we might have something from that huge cast-iron stove. And we’ve had cold salads and fruit and melons and BLTs and just-one-hot-thing for weeks now, fending off the temperatures, taking in the COOL.

He generally makes a huge pot of his incomparable Creamed Corn (worthy of capitals) on the weekend, and we’ll enjoy a heated-up bowl of it with just a tomato sandwich on a night or two. Or we’ll “walk out” to the restaurant nearby, where we’ll go this evening, with our little one having a “Sleepover”---possibly the last before their trip to the beach.

I always apologize for my lack of gumption to get into the kitchen these hot hot days---there’s not been Such A Summer in our twenty years here---and he soothes with murmurs of solace and enjoyment of whatever we ARE having. I didn't know that "Dewiiichuh" spoken around a mouthful of food COULD be such a compliment.

You know, in all my years before, in that mind-numbing, body-blasting heat of the Summer South, I didn’t know how NOT to cook. It was just what you did---all that steamy canning and preserving and pickling, whilst the peas and cornbread and dumplings and all those other homey concoctions simmered and baked and stewed, adding their own elevation to the meal and to the temperatures AND tempers.

Last night’s was a lovely Summer supper---elevated by the sum of its parts and just perfect in itself---a humble pot of vegetables, cooked long and SLOW in the old Southern manner, crusty, warm cornbread cooked upstairs in the “middle” oven to save heating up the big stove, the crisp-fried tender pork, the tangy punctuation of the onion, and those tomatoes, which could have stood alone, or beside the best dish of any chef of any age.

Home Grown Tomatoes---I pity the folks who passed them up for centuries just because they thought them to be poison. The risk would have been worth it.

LINES

photo from greenbaby

I began this blog by just flinging one post out into what seemed to be infinity. It was a cold November day, and now during this never-ending hot spell, that seems eons ago. Indeed, this is post Number Four Hundred Ninety Five, and sometime this week, if the Good Lord's willin' and the creek don't rise---we'll hit #500.


It feels as if I should SAY something. I mean really SAY something---about the South mostly, but something worthwhile---not just little frivols about dessert and bubbles and where-we-went-for-lunch.


If there's anything I HAVEN'T covered, and anybody has a question (things like grits and cousins-twice-removed and barbecue sauce have been covered, I think, but I'll take a stab at any Southern Subject within reason). EVEN THE HEAT, which is even worse-than-here, and I so feel for the folks sweltering under that Southern Sun.

Summer Heat---it's a a Fact of Life in our Hemisphere, and its toll on pore and patience has been a bell-mark of Life As I Know It. Right now, it weights down the days with its 85-before-breakfast here, whereas the overbearing heat and humidity of the South of my raising has already wilted every being---collar, coif and mood, before they can get the door slammed to keep in the cool.

It’s good for the crops, if there’s rain; it’s good for swimming and other cooling activities, it’s good for drying laundry. The sight of fresh-washed clothes strung on a line, the colors and the whites bright in the sun---that’s a seldom-sight these days, and I wish I HAD a clothesline. I happen to live near two ladies-who-do, so my eye-feast of the loops and swells of the breeze-stirred clean fabric is often waiting, just over the fence. And one of them has made me free to come and hang my own spreads and blankets and sheets upon her line, whenever I like.

The feel of the house is altered and uplifted when a great armful of fluffy, wind-dried laundry is brought down the stairs---concentrated sunshine and breeze-waft just settle into those fibers and lend a restful air to the whole place. Nestling your face on a smooth, wind-blown pillowslip brings sweet dreams of meadow-walks, and waking in the night to the well-remembered scent of childhood is a momentary journey to another time and place.

The flap of the white-white expanse as you fling the sheets upward like boat-sails, smoothing them on the bed, settling them into the corners, gives an age-old bit of grace to the week, and opening the linen closet to that burst of captured memory-scent brings memories of visits to Mammaw's house, where everything was always the same---comfortable and welcoming.

When my children were babies, we didn’t have a dryer for several years. I hung diapers and tiny shirts and socks every day of the week, hoping for sunshine, and on rainy days, it was time to string the stout cord to the loops in the top corners of the “spare room” for a day-long attempt at drying. In Winter, the room was used more often than the outdoor line, with a little gas heater providing the warmth for getting all those double-hung diapers and thick, fleecy footie-jammies ready for a comfy night’s sleep.

It was work, bending and looping and shaking the wrinkles out of those wet-heavy clumps of cloth in the basket, getting the pins on straight, evening up the rows, lifting that hand-smoothed pole to elevate the lax lines when all had been pinned and secured.

Just writing this, I can smell the unforgettable freshness of those bright-white baby-clothes, washed in Ivory Snow, dried in the breeze. Picking up and nestling a little one smelling of clean clothes and that unmistakable baby scent all their own, that aura of Johnson’s shampoo and warm cotton and the fresh-milk smell of baby-necks---the memory has me smiling right now.

Does ANYONE still have a clothesline any more? Do you miss them?

And Welcome, Chris L.---Number Forty-Nine on the Followers list. So glad you could join us!

LITTLE COMPTON G.R.I.T.S.

Some time ago, I happened upon a lovely, graciously-written blog, by a young woman in Rhode Island---she’s a teacher and a writer and a wonderful cook, whose tellings of the methods and the histories of good cooking involve wonderful descriptions of really good food and how to make it.


Just the name caught my eye: Little Compton Mornings. It appealed to me in the way that the idea of Summer Camp in Maine seemed the apex of a child’s life when I was young. The title had the draw and promise of East Egg/West Egg, without all that pesky Gatsby Glitz. I could just see the white fences, and hear the flags snap in the wind.

The round, smooth shape of the title seems as if it would be a book sitting on my Alcott shelf, just there beside Jo’s Boys; or perhaps it’s an eagerly-anticipated weekly column in a newspaper or magazine, looked-forward to by all, for the talents of the writer, who knows home-keeping and cooking and canning and the raising of all the fruits of the land, with its author much in demand amongst the readership for judging at the Fair and for advice on recipes and homekeeping, consulted with the gravity and acceptance of a personable oracle, and revered as a celebrity.

And just a couple of weeks ago, a whole page on FRYING caused this Delta Girl to award Jane her G.R.I.T.S. membership. Do go and have a look---you’ll be getting out your pans and making up batters before you can blink.

http://littlecomptonmornings.blogspot.com/2010/07/frying-frittered-feast.html

And today, Jane accepted her G.R.I.T.S. title most graciously and charmingly, speculating upon the activities and the qualifications, in some cases quite accurately, and in others, in hilarious error (I’ve GOT to introduce that girl to Martha White). Plus, I must point out that grits is not just a name Southerners call cornmeal mush.

Her today’s post is on Cornmeal, staple in both North and South, and I hope you’ll look in.