the meat of a fruit

the meat of a fruit, a fleshy peach, these meat-aphors (i appologize, i couldn't resist) are fascinating because today i saw something striking: the most deep ruby-red watermelon i have ever seen in my life.

my mind immediately went to the meat department-

normally something i actually avoid looking at, as raw meat is something i don't stomach very well...that is visually or actually, as when, between conversational soundbites with a new acquaintance, they smilingly put in mouthfulls of steak tartare, which i admit was quite a funny scene as we were both consicous of my averted gaze to avoid a visible replusion reaction, while at the same time finding myself intellectually fascinated by the fact that this dish is a reality-- something that my used-to-be-vegeterian-and-still-diffident-about-meat-self just can't really grasp.

the thing that struck me when i found this wedge of watermelon is that it exactly reminded me of the way that the color of the meat in the grocery store flabbergasted me when i had just moved here. i literally was taken back & stopped to stare the first times i saw a meat counter with absurdly dark red, bright, vibrant colors which i could only reason (being raised on the rainbow of FDA-approved colorants only an american child could understand) must be additives, fake. i had never seen such colors in any safeway/kroger/whole foods back in the states.

so of course i was even more amazed when i found out that, with full disclosure of ingredients, confirmed by the staff, these were real colors.

and this cocomero, watermelon flesh, was just as stunning. comparing it to the packaged meats, the alizarin crimson plus cadmium red light combination of colors (if one were painting from a tube of oil paints) were nature's delightful way of announcing what i tasted on bringing it home: this is the sweetest, most nourishing meat of the soil.

indeed, it's the only kind of raw "meat" that i can enjoy among the many new and strange versions that italian cuisine, like other european ones, confronts me with in its proposing various types of animal foods before unknown and still unthinkable to my poor, squirmish inner-american-child self!