Like the scent of honeysuckle along the side of fence, the sweet musky aroma of cantaloupe is a smell of summer. It’s a fragrance I never tire of.
One summer, our family traveled to Italy to spend a week in a Tuscan villa in celebration of my significant birthday. We ate, walked, ate some more, walked some more, and visited every market in site. I cried when we left all that ripe cantaloupe behind.
Which sounds strange, I know, because you might think I didn’t appreciate the pasta or the pizza, the wine or gelato, which I did. You might think I didn’t taste local prosciutto, which I did, especially when wrapped around melon.
The One Summer Craving I’ll Never Outgrow
To me, melons, and cantaloupe in particular, embody summer. They are a part of my summer childhood watching my mother scoop the soft orange flesh into rounds and pile them into a basket she’d carved from a fat red watermelon.
She kept a steady supply of cantaloupes ripening on the kitchen counter. When she’d slice into one, take a quick sample with a spoon, she’d smile ear to ear, and we knew it was sweet and ripe.
Back in those days, most of the cantaloupe was ripe and sweet. It didn’t come into the markets too early and wasn’t grown in places so far away that it had to be trucked in before it was ready to eat.
Today, it’s not so easy to find the perfect cantaloupe. But I’ve grown to trust the Athena melons, and each summer we await their arrival sometime in early July.
I attempted to grow melons after eating them small and intensely flavored that summer in Tuscany. The first attempt was not successful, so the next spring I dedicated a better garden spot with more sun and water.
The results were successful, but three or four cantaloupes for all that work didn’t seem enough to quench my cantaloupe cravings. We bought more melons from the local farmer.
Caitlin Bensel; Food Stylist: Torie Cox
How To Pick A Good Cantaloupe
Whether you buy or grow your own cantaloupe, the way to spot a good one is just to smell it. Bring it close to your face in sniffing distance, and it should smell sweet and musky. A lot of people press on the stem end to see if there’s a little give which means it’s ripe, but too many people pressing doesn’t seem like good melon stewardship to me.
When I get the cantaloupe in my kitchen, I rinse the outside well in warm water, and dry it off before slicing in half. I scoop out the seeds with a soup spoon, and slice each half again into quarters. Getting fancy, I trim the more slender slices of rind and wrap them in prosciutto.
My favorite are the melon balls to pop one by one into my mouth or top a summer salad. They’re definitely nostalgic. My granddaughter loves them, too. And I’ve still got my mother’s melon baller in the kitchen drawer to pull into action.
Cantaloupe cravings are something I’ve learned to manage and appreciate, too.
Read the original article on Southern Living
