Watermelon Rind Preserves
Last weekend, E and I took a train down to Louisiana for a quick,
two-night visit to my parents’ house in the country. We were eating a
surprisingly sweet watermelon for lunch on Saturday when my father
noticed it had something he hadn’t seen in a long time: a thick rind. It
seems that watermelons are being bred to have increasingly thinner
rinds because the red flesh is what most people care about. You probably
haven’t missed the thick layer of white between the part of the
watermelon that you eat and the green outer skin–unless, like me, you
grew up eating sweet watermelon rind preserves on toast, made from a
recipe that your grandmother probably got from her grandmother.
With watermelon rinds so skimpy lately,
my father–chief preserve and jelly maker in my family–hadn’t made
preserves in years. But here was a rind that had potential, so soon my
mother was taking down her recipe box and looking for my grandmother’s
hand-written recipe. As she unfolded it, it almost fell apart in her
hands:
Watermelon Rind Preserves
Watermelon Rind Preserves
Watermelon Rind Preserves
Watermelon Rind Preserves
Watermelon Rind Preserves
Watermelon Rind Preserves
Watermelon Rind Preserves
Watermelon Rind Preserves
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