Today on Food on Fridays we take a look at one of my favorite summer foods: watermelon.

While it was possible to buy watermelons in Tübingen, on the few occasions when I tried one it wasn’t that tasty. So, it had been a while since Chris and I had enjoyed a good piece of watermelon. One of the pleasant things about supermarkets in both Connecticut and Florida is that in both places it’s been possible to buy decent-to-really-good tasting watermelon.  IMHO, there’s nothing more refreshing than a nice bit of watermelon on a hot day. Chris and I have really been enjoying having it on these hot days here in Florida, that’s for sure.

Now, I also remember enjoying having watermelon in summertime as a kid. I recall that my cousins and I would be given triangle slices of watermelon on hot summer days. We’d take them to the stoop outside my grandparent’s farmhouse and sit there, happily letting juice drip down our chins while we spit the black seeds onto the ground.

Ah, memories.  Spitting out the watermelon seeds was always part of the fun as a kid, right?

Except …  Chris and I were eating some watermelon recently with our teenage relatives.  One of them commented that they’d once gotten piece of watermelon that still had a bunch of seeds in it. Can you image? “Eww – gross!” they all agreed. To them, you see, a watermelon was always seedless. There was NO fun to be had eating watermelon,  they explained, if you had to spit out a bunch of seeds while you were eating it.

Hmm. I’d never considered it, but clearly there is a watermelon age gap. Perhaps if you’re old enough to remember using a typewriter, and old enough to have used a TV or telephone dial, you’re probably old enough to remember when watermelons by default had black seeds.

Which means you’re probably with me on the far side of the watermelon gap. I’m just saying.

*****

P.S.  FWIW, I found this site that says seedless watermelons are almost as old as I am … but I don’t remember ever having any, or at least not seeing it frequently available, until I was an adult.  Apparently I’m not alone — click here for  another person’s take on seeded vs seedless.