When was the last time your kids participated in a spitting contest? No, not spitting at each other — spitting watermelon seeds?
One summer when I was growing up, our local library’s summer reading contest culminated in a summer festival. I remember the highlight was, not the free books we’d earned, but facing off against my little brother in a seed-spitting contest. My son has a while to wait before he can challenge his little sister to a contest, but he does know to spit out the black seeds when eating watermelon. But with the rise of seedless watermelons in the grocery store, will that lesson become irrelevant?
The Washington Post‘s Jane Black examines the issue in today’s paper. I won’t give away my stance on seeds vs. seedless, though loyal readers will likely guess … but read the article to see what I and others had to say. (And that lovely seeded melon pictured above? From our CSA farm.)
What’s your stance? Pro-spitting? Or are seeds too much hassle for today’s busy children? 😉
(This is actually the second time I’ve been quoted in the Post talking about watermelon. I guess that makes me a melon expert, right? If you’ve got a fresh melon around this holiday weekend, you might enjoy my Watermelon Gazpacho and/or Slushie recipes.)
5 responses so far ↓
1 Christina @ Spoonfed // Sep 2, 2010 at 11:58 am
Love this. I was just talking to one of my favorite farmers about this very thing. Though we’re food purists in nearly everything else, we’d fallen into the seedless-watermelon rut because they tend to be small (the perfect size for our family of three) and convenient. But the taste has always been just so-so.
So this summer we’ve been buying melons from the farmers’ markets instead. *Seeded* melons. And now we will never (ever!) go back.
.-= Christina @ Spoonfed´s last blog post ..Carrots are just Cheetos wannabes =-.
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3 Kate // Sep 21, 2010 at 5:59 pm
Lenore Skenazy just mentioned this on her Free Range Kids blog. Apparently watermelon seeds are considered dangerous. They’re choking hazards, you know. ::rolleyes::
http://freerangekids.wordpress.com/2010/09/02/kids-watch-out-its-god-help-us-a-watermelon-seed/
4 foodietots
Twitter: foodietots
// Sep 22, 2010 at 1:18 am
@ Kate ~ Oh, thanks for letting me know it was mentioned on Free Range Kids — love reading the comments over there. I laughed out loud at that quote in the article — seriously, I think kids have plenty to worry about without fearing tiny little watermelon seeds!
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