Welcome to the inaugural post of The Grouchy Gastronome 2.0! In honour of your humble Gnome moving from blogspot to her very own domain, I am starting a new feature called The Experimentation Zone, where I try new (and possibly disgusting) foods, all for your amusement. At the grocery store this weekend, I purchased the following food stuffs:
Probably the first item that catches your eye is the weird spiky orange thing that is front and center in the picture. It caught my eye at the grocery store as well, which is probably why I didn’t notice that it costs fucking SIX dollars! Anyway the horned melon or Cucumis metuliferus as it is known in the scientific community is a member of both the cucumber AND melon family (thank you Wikipedia). This leads me to conclude that at some rowdy vegetable/fruit party a cucumber and a cantaloupe got a little frisky and produced this orange monstrosity. I mean, just look at it, its angry and spiky and basically saying “fuck you” to the world. You know what this thing is? It is the Grouchy Gastronome in fruit form! It doesn’t give a shit what anyone thinks about it, because it’s what is inside that counts:
Ok, seriously, what the fuck? I wasn’t expecting it to taste good, but I also wasn’t expecting it to be full of seeds, thus making it impossible to eat without spitting all over the bloody place. The irony is that the fruit actually tastes good, kind of like a sweet cucumber, but if you try to take a bite you end up with literally 20 seeds in your mouth. So, I basically paid six dollars to lick a fruit and spit out seeds before giving up and throwing it in the trash.
My Grade: B (it does taste good, but the seeds, oh the seeds; also six fucking dollars?!?)
So many questions – how hard are the spikes? It looks like it could be used as a weapon. That would be fun. I think 6 dollars would be cheap if throwing it at someone would put their eye out. other questions include why was the password for this site so fucking annoying? Congrats on the new site, btw.
Working on making the blog as user friendly as possible…
Next time I buy one of these melons, will test whether or not it hurts by throwing it in the general vicinity of That Guy I Know.
Also, how does it smell? I’m all about the smells. Also, is it just the photo or are those seeds quite large? Maybe you could roast the seeds?
The seeds were increadibly large, thus making the eating of the fruit rather difficult. It smelled like an unripe (green) banana actually.
you smell like an unripe banana.
Ah, Kiwanas! I think that’s how they’re spelled, at least. They’re so expensive because they ship them in from Australia or something, and it’s not like people are buying them in bulk. I had one a few years ago (back in Y-town) and I was disappointed. It was good, but I expected some exotic fruit flavor, not…cucumber.
Here’s a fun tidbit about Kiwanas. They’re used as alien fruit in all kinds of sci-fi shows. If there’s an episode of Star Trek where they’re cooking something, there are always Kiwanas in the background. I’ve seen them on other shows as well. Australians must think we’re idiots. “LOOK AT THE ALIEN FOOD! HOW DO THEY MAKE THAT?!?”