It’s watermelon season!  Not that Norway grows watermelons but the shops are packed with the bowling ball fruit at the moment.  (I’ve always had a secret desire to carve three finger-holes in my watermelon and just bowl that thing down the driveway into a ten pin of pineapples.)

It is a little weird for me to have watermelon in July.  Watermelon always meant Christmas as I come from the Southern Hemisphere.  On scorching Christmas days kids sit in the backyard slurping up watermelon and seeing how far they can spit the seeds.

Of course, nowadays watermelon is grown seedless.  But this makes it a lot easier to pulp and drink.  It is very un-Norwegian to drink watermelon juice. In fact, I have only come across one fresh juice bar in all of Norway (and they didn’t even serve watermelon juice).  I’m sure there are other fresh juice shops around, maybe?  But the one I know of is in Oslo Sentrum train station.  Nonetheless, our family have grown quite accustomed to drinking watermelon – and it is a perfect refreshment after an outing to the beach.

With our pulped watermelon we love to have a Norwegian soda water with a hint of mango and papaya, but you have to pour slowly so the watermelon doesn’t froth up too much.  Sometimes we add a little bit of apple juice but not too much, we don’t want to override the watermelon flavour.  And the taste – WOW!

Soon watermelon season will be over and then I’ll have to wait for next year to have it again.  Because Norway grows and imports seasonally it makes me value food so much more.  I get excited when I see clementines which means Christmas in Norway.  I look forward to going blueberry picking which is in Autumn.  And when lamb is available it is certainly Spring.  I think this is the way life was meant to be – not just looking forward to a weather change but also the anticipation of colours, smells and tastes of seasonal food.