In my childhood, wedges of ice-cold, pink watermelon, dotted with shiny, black seeds were the before-dark, Fourth of July Picnic dessert. When the fireflies appeared and the bonfire was glowing, we moved on to sticky, hot, sometimes burned, toasted marshmallows.

It was important to eat the watermelon before sunset because we needed to be able to see who could spit seeds the farthest. Even the grown-ups enjoyed the contest and so, spitting, limited to seeds at picnics, was exempt from the general prohibition against spitting.

The distance-spitting competition usually deteriorated into a melee of targeting siblings, rivals and unsuspecting pets.

Late in the afternoon, on July third, my dad would bring home a block of ice. He used an awe inspiring ice pick to break up the ice for the food cooler, the drink cooler and the metal tub that held the watermelon. For many years, I ate watermelon plain, not even dusted with salt. Watermelon juice dripped off my chin and down my arms.  It was sweet, pink, crisp, cool organized water.

Watermelon is an inexpensive fruit that is loaded with Vitamins C and A and also a source of the anti-oxidant, lycopene. Historians believe that it originated in Africa, and today China is the world’s largest producer of watermelon.  When I was traveling in Shanghai in the summer of 1985, the garbage collectors were on strike and watermelon rinds were piled high in empty lots across the city. There are more than a thousand varieties of watermelon ranging from under a pound softball size to gigantic fruits that weigh more than two hundred pounds.  Watermelon flesh may be red, orange, yellow or white.

I still love watermelon even though it rarely has the necessary ammunition for a distance competition or even target practice. I have progressed from serving plain chunks of watermelon to serving it sliced and dusted with smoky herbs, and have used it in salads, salsas, and drinks.  A sprinkle of seasoning and a squeeze of citrus made slices of watermelon sing.  Here’s how I made Spicy Watermelon Slices, Watermelon Salsa and Watermelon Coolers: … read more

The first time I was aware of fish sauce, I thought that the sewage pipe had broken in our Singapore kitchen. I was upstairs getting ready to go out to dinner and Beth, a young Filipina who lived with us, was cooking dinner for my sons. Beth was not a great cook but the boys always enjoyed the chicken adobo she made. I ran to the kitchen, expecting to have to deal with toxic waste, and found Beth laughing. She assured me that the smell was just a bit of fish sauce that she had poured into a hot pan.

I couldn’t believe that something that smelled so terrible could make anything taste good. I soon learned that fish sauce has been used, around the world for at least 2500 years to add flavor and as a main ingredient in both dipping sauces and dressings for grilled meat and fish, noodle and vegetable salads. Fish sauce is made by fermenting fish that have been layered with salt and it imparts umami, a Japanese word that translates as “good taste”, to food. Garum was the name for fish sauce to ancient Romans but it was usually referred to as that “evil smelling sauce”. Not only did Romans use it to season meat and fish dishes there is mention of its use in a pear and honey souffle!
Fish sauce is the ingredient that transformed a shrimp and vegetable salad into a Vietnamese inspired, summer salad that was grand enough to serve at an elegant dinner party. This salad combines many of the flavors of Southeast Asia and can be varied to suit your palate, pantry and pocketbook. Pork or chicken can be substituted for shrimp, and mangos or other melons can be substituted for the watermelon. Rather than making this salad in a large salad bowl I made individual salads. Here’s how I did it: … read more

As I was making papaya salad for a party we had on Friday night, my friend Victoria began to sing a song I hadn’t heard since I was eight. My father loved big band music and crooners and Perry Como was one of his favorites.

When he played his 78-rpm record of Perry Como singing Papaya Mama, my sister and I jumped around and tried to dance like Carmen Miranda. She was the Brazilian samba singer who wore hats piled high with fruit and the inspiration for Chiquita Banana. I didn’t think of papaya as something to eat until many years later.

The first time I tasted papaya, a friend had whirled it in a blender with milk and ice. The drink was a lovely pale, peachy-orange color and tasted terrible. I next tasted it a few years later with pineapple, mango and banana as part of a tropical fruit salad on a holiday in Puerto Rico and I didn’t mind it. It had a nice texture and I enjoyed it topped with a bit of lime juice.

Papaya is a native of Mexico and it is cultivated in most tropical and subtropical countries around the world. It grows on a tree-like plant that looks a bit like a small umbrella of leaves atop a very long stem. There are two types of papayas, Mexican and Hawaiian. Hawaiian papayas are small, usually weighing about a pound. Mexican papayas are much larger and may weigh as much as ten pounds. I prefer the slightly less intense flavor of the Mexican papaya. The edible seeds from the hollow center of a ripe papaya have a spicy, pepper flavor and are used in salad dressings or salsas.

Packed with vitamins, minerals and natural fiber, papaya delivers a nutritional punch. Indigenous Americans have used papaya, rich in an enzyme called papain, to tenderize tough meat for thousands of years. Rubbing papaya peel on to skin rashes, insect bites, jellyfish stings and burns is a common, natural remedy where papayas grow. Papaya extract is sold in tablet form as a remedy for digestive problems.

Although there are lots of good reasons to eat papaya, the best reason is that it is delicious, particularly when featured in an Indian inspired vegetarian dinner salad. Here’s how I made it: … read more

Garlic scapes, strawberries,  kale, spicy greens, eggs and dandelion greens.  The garlic scapes and kale are going to be added to a quiche. You can find the recipe here. The strawberries are lovely naked.

My mother gave her mother, my Nana, daffodils three times each spring, in February on her birthday, in March for Nana’s birthday and in May for Mothers’ day. When I was ten, we were buying daffodils for Nana’s birthday when I saw bundles of strawberry plants for sale.

I convinced my mother that since Nana loved to garden, strawberry plants would be a perfect present. There were June bearing plants and everbearing varieties. Everbearing was the obvious choice. Naively I assumed that everbearing plants meant strawberries all the time, strawberries every day, long after the small, dark red strawberries in square, wooden baskets with red stains disappeared from the market at the end of June. In fact it everbearing means that there would be a berry harvest in June and a second in August. It wasn’t until years later that strawberries were flown from California to markets around the country and available year round.

Nana was delighted with both the daffodils and the strawberry plants. After lunch we went out to her garden to make a strawberry bed. When she unwrapped the bundle of plants, she said that there were enough plants for two strawberry beds, that I was old enough to have my own garden and that she would help me. I picked a sunny spot near the climbing, pink rose bush and it didn’t take long to make my garden. I watched the plants carefully and learned that each flower held the promise of one sweet red berry.
I watered the plants with gentle streams from my watering can and Nana taught me how to recognize weeds. My first crop was less than the bounty I had hoped for – only one harvest and three and a half cups rather than two pails but there were enough berries to make my first ever, strawberry shortcake for Sunday dinner with Nana and my grandfather.

I wasn’t sure what traditional strawberry shortcake was. I had seen curious sponge cake cups and aerosol cans of whipped cream displayed next to the strawberries at the market, but they were not what I wanted for the strawberries I had tended for nearly two months.

I would make proper shortcake and top each dessert with real whipped real cream. When I found a recipe for shortcake at the library, I was surprised to learn that shortcake was really a biscuit and nothing like the shortbread cookies we had at Christmas time. Here’s how I made it: … read more

The sun and rain have made the vegetables grow. Here are leaves from my CSA bag.

In the upper left  a tender collard leaf, cilantro is below it and on the right a solitary sorrel leaf and a red leaf lettuce below.

I have never eaten sorrel and was delighted to find a sheet of recipes nestled into my CSA bag. Sorrel is a spring green with surprisingly strong  lemon flavor. It can be eaten in a salad with mixed greens, added to asparagus or spinach, used to make a sauce for fish, to make a lemony pesto or turned into soup.

I cooked  sorrel, with green onions and spinach for dinner last night and was quite pleased with the results.  Here’s how I did it: … read more