Watermelon - the best way to cut a watermelon

Summer is just around the corner. Yes I know I said it (and hopefully didn't just jinx it). Here in my city, these 2 seasons change over so rapidly that we seem to get winter to summer in a week. So I'm fully expecting (and hopeful) to get 25 degrees next week, though it just hailed last week. How else would I know summer is here? Watermelons! Watermelon is the ultimate summer fruit. If summer can be a fruit, it would be a watermelon. I know sometimes you can buy watermelons in the winter but no one does that - the melons are not as tasty and we're not in the mood for bad melons. It's interesting actually, with today's green house technology, ya think we'd get lots of watermelons any time of the year by now... It's officially mid May and this week my local grocery store had watermelons on sale - and that's a sure sign for summer.

Watermelon is also my absolute favorite fruit. It's juicy, it's sweet, it's crunchy, and it's a bright red with green skin. I can eat it for any meal of the day and not get sick of it. Like a typical lazy 21st century human, I get the ones that are "seedless". Seeds are a nuisance to eat around, they are more annoying to pick out. I think I've eaten quite a few of seeds over the years because I couldn't be bothered to pick them out.

How to cut a melon? There's not one way obviously. If you like wedges, triangles, melon balls, whatever. But I find this particular way really works for me. There are a few benefits: 1) you only get your hands dirty once 2) stores nicely 3) easy to eat with forks and beautiful display with other fruits. So let's get on with it:

1) Wash Mr. melon with skin on. I typically do this anyway since there may be some left over mud on the melons. In today's environment, I'll just add a drop of dish soap too just to make sure my melon is squeaky clean.

2) Slice the top and bottom off so the melon sits straight (and steadily) on a cutting board. This is so you can begin to work with the melon without it rolling around. Less of a mess, and  less chance to cut yourself.

3) Slice the skin off following the shape of the melon. This is an easier thing to do now you have the melon sitting steadily on a flat surface. Sometimes if you slice too little off you end up with all the white/light green inner skin on still - no matter, just slice a bit more off. The lighter green stuff is edible but not sweet, some people pickle the stuff. It's not my favorite bit of the melon so we slice that off and discard all the skin. In the end, your goal is a round, happy, red/pink ball that sits atop of your cutting board.

4) Slice a circular cross section, cut length-wise, then width-wise. This is to cube the melon to even-sized pieces, easy to eat, easy to store.

Alright who's ready for some sweet juicy watermelon!

Notes:
- Make sure you absolutely use a knife and a cutting board that's just for fruits. I try to keep my cutting boards separate at all times. Why? If I wash my cutting board clean everytime? Well, raw meat particles are not sanitary - even if you wash your board, there are always going to be nooks and crannies on your cutting board that keeps some particles in the board. On the same note, same with some really pungent vegetables, think onion. Those particles will also linger in the pores of your cutting board so you better keep them apart. Grossed out yet? We certainly don't want onion smelling watermelons, or raw meat particles in our fruits.