Make a Dishless Summer Fruit Salad
So you volunteered to supply something sweet for the block party, company picnic, or anything else, but you don't want to have to worry about losing your serving dish? Try this clever method of avoiding such a catastrophe!
Steps
- Purchase or otherwise obtain your fruits. This article will assume a fruit salad of seedless grapes, apples, bananas, pineapples, honeydew Make a Melon, Avocado and Prawn Salad, cantaloupe, and watermelon.
- Cut the fruits into bite-size pieces. For melons use a melon baller - the pieces are more uniform. A small ice cream scoop will work as well.
- Prepare all of the fruits you are going to include except for the apple and the watermelon. The apple goes in last. Set all fruit aside - put it in the refrigerator on paper plates covered in plastic wrap or something, it doesn't matter. Whatever you want to do, just get it out of the way and in a suitable place.
- Take a reasonably sharp knife and the watermelon. Lay the watermelon on its side and see where it settles. This will be your base. Cut at the opposite side, the side facing up, about an inch or two down. Cut in a zig-zag pattern all the way around the watermelon. Remove the piece you cut off and set it rind-side-down on the table or whatever you're cutting on.
- Take your melon baller out. Scoop out as much of the watermelon's flesh as you possibly can. It's kind of like gutting a pumpkin, but it smells better and you can eat the bits that are too pathetically small to be included in your salad.
- Have two bowls nearby. One to put the watermelon balls in and the other to drain the melon every so often. They don't call it watermelon for nothing, you know. Once you've scooped out all the melon balls you can from the watermelon, turn to that bit you cut off back in step four and repeat the process. Now you have a watermelon container for your fruit salad!
- Fill your melon with as much fruit as it can hold - don't forget to slice up the apples into chunks too! - and use the little watermelon piece from step four as a lid.
- Wrap your masterpiece in 2 or 3 layers of plastic wrap, fastened at the top with a knot or a ribbon or something else of your choosing.
- Take the finished fruit salad to the event you're going to and use the plastic wrap as a tablecloth-guard. Fruit salad can get a little messy. Afterwards, transfer the remaining fruit salad into some Tupperware and discard the watermelon bowl. It won't keep very well and you can't eat it, so what's the point of letting it stay in your refrigerator?
Tips
- Alternatively, you can make a dessert for two by cutting the watermelon in half horizontally (across its middle rather than from end to end). Following steps five through nine, you end up with two little bowls of delicious fruit salad.
- Every last molecule of watermelon flesh doesn't have to be scraped out of the fruit. It's okay to leave some pink in there.
- Add some whipped cream for an extra special treat.
- If you're especially creative, you can probably fashion eating utensils out of watermelon rind. If you want, try it and tell me how that works out.
Warnings
- Knives are sharp and can easily, with nothing more than a quick, firm touch, cause some essential body parts to fall off. Be careful.
- Some people may be allergic to certain fruits. You may want to take that into consideration before preparing a veritable smorgasbord of fruit flavors. Killing someone isn't exactly the ideal company picnic, after all.
Things You'll Need
- Watermelon
- Knife
- Plastic wrap
- Fruit
- Melon baller or small ice cream scoop
