Fruit Salad

My parents celebrated their 60th Wedding Anniversary yesterday. My brother and my two sisters opened my parent's little farm to friends and family for a few hours, and we fed our guests as much local food as we could.

On the positive side, we utilized the following fresh, local produce:
Knob and green onions
Cilantro
Summer squash
Sweet corn
New red creamer potatoes
New red beets
Black sweet cherries
Red raspberries
Blueberries
Cantaloupe

Not so positively, we served delicious, but long-traveled shrimp, from who knows where besides Costco, and yellow cake from Sara Lee (but with a home-made frosting, beautifully garnished with fresh raspberries and blueberries, thanks to a talented niece). My youngest sister made a fabulous sauce from the cilantro, etc., and then mixed in the shrimp. Though from far away no doubt, the shrimp were excellent, and the other salad components sublime.

But it was the fruit salad--only the watermelon had more than a hundred miles on it--that emerged as the food of choice. And it was funny how people reacted to it.

I want to explain that reaction, but first, I'll explain how I put the salad together, as it was my job to procure the fruit and prepare the dish: The watermelons were huge, over thirty pounds each. I cut the tops off of them about three quarters up from their base, and hollowed out the bases to make big serving bowls for the salad. Then I cut little triangles around the top edges, like small teeth carved out of a jack-o-lantern. I seeded the watermelon and cut it into chunks big enough to explode inside your mouth. Then I cut and seeded the 'lopes into chunks about half the size of the watermelon. Muskmelon, as they're often called, are pretty intensely flavored most of the time, and they can easily overpower the more delicate subtleties of other fruit.

Next, I washed and pitted the sweet cherries, Cavalier, a variety known for it's crunchy texture, sweet flesh and black color; one of the best sweets grown in these parts. Then I washed the blueberries and red raspberries. Next, I mixed the melons and blueberries in a very large stainless steel mixing bowl, in roughly equal parts by weight volume. The cherries have a very dark juice that will stain the melon chunks, and the raspberries are far too delicate to hold up under a vigorous mixing. So when the two melon types and blueberries were well mixed, I gently folded in the raspberries. Lastly, I dried the pitted cherries in some toweling, and, being careful not to be too rough, folded them into the mix. Finally, I filled the hollowed-out watermelon with the now completed salad, and added a large wooden spoon to finish the task. It was beautiful. But its beauty was dimmed by its taste....

I stood back from the crowd and watched as our visitors spooned conservative servings of the fruit salad on their plates. Soon however, conservative portions grew to platefuls by those seeking seconds. Then thirds. And more than a few went back four times!

Not a single person could possibly have eaten that salad and not made indistinguishable noises. I kept pretty busy keeping the watermelon bowl full.

Being born and raised inside the Great Fruit Belt of Michigan's Southwest, I've known all my life how a piece of fruit should taste. I've had the pleasure, and experienced the awe, of consuming a vast array of fruit when it was at its peak for flavor. I've known, forever it seems, about the noises people make when they're eating the best of the best; they are oblivious to their own noise, being in a flow state of culinary satisfaction. Only one other activity I know of, causes such a reaction.

And so it is with eating a fresh fruit salad, when its fresh that is, and when the fruit are perfect, and when that fruit is from Berrien County, Michigan.