Lemon Drop Melon

I am sure there are plenty of things I could be doing right now around my house.  A few things that come to mind are dishes, laundry and various other cleaning opportunities that my kids provide me with daily.  Instead I decided that blogging about a yummy new fruit we tried was much more worthy.

Today while perusing the fresh fruit and veggie section at out local store I spotted a small section labeled Lemon Drop Melon (may be called  Lemon Melon not 100% sure which is the proper name as our store had it labeled Lemon Drop but when I google it I barely come up with any results for either combination).

We live in the sticks so I am always impressed with the large variety of fresh fruit and veggies our little country bumpkin store has available, and its usually locally (from local small farms) or in the least USA grown produce too.  For that reason the selection changes with the seasons and in the summer they get in some very exotic (to us) fruit and vegetables.  In the past we have purchased star fruit, pomelos, mangos, pomegranate, kiwi's as well as the staple fruits of the summer from them. 

It was their wide selection of fruits that inspired me to create my Food Bucket List.  Its a list of foods I want to try eating at least once before I, you know, kick the bucket.  It mainly contains a lot of exotic fruits and veggies but also has fun things on it like Deep Fried Snickers and Ostrich Burgers.

our Lemon Drop Melon before it was cut up

I also love to buy a wide variety of fruits to expose my kids to.   I think it's important for them to have an appreciation for all foods and to try new things as much as possible. My kids LOVE fruit (what kid doesn't right!) so its easiest to get them to try new flavors when they come from fruits.  Currently their favorites include peaches, strawberries, blueberries and raspberries.  So I purchased all of those along with the Lemon Drop Melon and made a little fruit salad to go along with our lunch when we got home.

I was not sure what to expect from the melon.  I imagined it would be somewhat tart or tangy from the name so I was not sure how much the kids would like it.  Therefore I only put about 1/4 of the melon into the fruit salad.  They. LOVED! It.  They were picking the melon out over all the rest of the fruit and asking for more melon before they even touched anything else.  I made them finish the rest of the fruit they had on their plates first and then cut up more melon.  We ended up eating the entire thing, minus a few slices I held back to try some Lemon Drop Melon Water (which is currently chilling in the fridge, I have yet to try it but hope it's as good as it sounds).

Lemon Drop Melon Water

The taste of the melon is hard to describe.  Its sweet with a tangy almost salty taste to it.  The closest I can come is that it really reminded me of my childhood.  Growing up my grandma would always sprinkle salt onto our honey dew or cantaloupe melon after she sliced it up (healthy I know!).  It sounds awful if you never tried it but it actually tastes good.  I no longer do this as an adult, I appreciate the tastes of the fruit themselves and don't want to add any more salt to our diets BUT that's really what this fruit tasted like.  It was sweet like a honey dew or cantaloupe but it had a tangy/salty taste to it as well.  In a totally good way.

The whole point of my nonsensical ramblings is.... in the wise words of Yo Gabba Gabba......

TRY IT, YOU'LL LIKE IT!

Try new foods, expand your horizons, buy that crazy looking/sounding fruit. You never know if you will like it if you never try it.

Ok, so now that I have wasterd 30 minutes of my afternoon writing this and a good 5 minutes of your afternoon as you read this I guess I will go and do something a little more productive.

Love,
this fun fruit lovin' mama,
Christy


P.S.  Check out my new blog called More Exotic Melons for a little more info on this melon and several other new (to me) melons I discovered.

UPDATE 08/01/11

Check out the comment that Sarah left, she works in the produce department at a grocery store and had some great info to share, thank you so much Sarah! 
Also, I just bought a Lemon Drop Melon a few days ago and used it for smoothies, I will be posting the recipe soon, it was YUM YUM YUM!  Be on the look out for that, I will link it here when it is up.

"Hi! My name is Sarah and I just stumbled across your blog here for the first time, and I'm hoping I can be of a little bit of help. I work for a grocery store in the produce section and it's my job to find out more information to pass on to customers and it just so happens that the Lemon Drop melon is what I'm looking at this week, and I'm happy to share the information that we found.
First off, the Galia Melon and the Lemon Drop Melon (a.k.a. Lemon Melon) are NOT the same melon.
The Lemon Melon came about only in the last few decades from a melon breeder in the Mediterranean region. He originally found a melon that was naturally high in citric acid, which is what gives the Lemon Melon it's lemony taste. Over the next decade or two after it's discovery, it was bred with many sweet-type melons using traditional breeding techniques (Non-GMO) to get the delicious melon that we have today.
As far as nutrition goes, the Lemon Drop Melon is fat free, low in calories (60 calories/cup) and high in Vitamins A and C.

To Sarah: I don't have twitter, I am not "cool" like that and find new technology intimidating.   I am on Facebook

Also, I got a notification a few days ago that someone left a comment on More Exotic Melons telling a trick on how to know if the Lemon Drop Melon is ripe.  I know many of you are wondering this, however when I go back and look the comment was gone.  I remember he said something about the green lines in the rind being dark in color but that's it.  So Sorry, I have never been good at how to tell if any melons are ripe.  I usually just grab 1, I have not been disappointed yet.


You can feel free to contact me on my personal twitter account, which is sarahwells61 if you have any more questions. Hope this helped! "