Watermelon season is almost over. Today is the first day of September, which means slowly but surely watermelons are going “bye-bye.” Fall is approaching as the end of summer is just around the corner.
You see, food is actually dedicated by seasons here. Georgia is not like California. I can’t go to the grocery store and buy the departing watermelon in the middle of December no matter how much I cry and whine. It is gone. Tough Luck. Gotta wait until next summer.
But that is okay, I am officially sick of watermelon because that is one of the unintended consequence of seasonal foods. You end up eating it all the time. You end up seeing it in your dinning room table, mocking you to eat it because “the limited time offer” is almost over. My host mom kindly offered me watermelon as dessert yesterday. I stared it with indifference. My host mom took a slice and enjoyed it very much. Spitting out the black seeds was too much of an effort for me, so I just didn’t eat it. Come back to me next month and ask me, I may regret not eating it.
I know I will be sad about one thing though for sure: the availability of fruit. I have been forewarned by other Peace Corps volunteers that “winter is coming” (there is your Game of Thrones tribute for the day). I’m serious though, because winter might as well be nicknamed “the season of potatoes.” I already eat a lot of potatoes. In fact, that was my dinner two nights ago: fried potatoes with a bit of onions. Yet winter has a lot of potatoes and no pears, figs, watermelons or a lot of fruit for that matter. I should rephrase, there will not be a lot of fresh fruit.
Georgians are smart because they take the fresh fruit they have on hand now and start making “compote” out of it (whole fruit in juice) or they will make jam. Currently, my host mom is making a lot of fig jam with the figs from our yard. There is enough Leghvi Muraba (fig jam) to go around for the entire street. My coworker told me that she has been making compote for the past couple of days, few hours each night. The problem with compote and jam is that most of the nutritional value is gone because the fruit was boiled for hours. Also, don’t ask me on how much sugar is in compote and jam. The answer is that it is safest not to know.
Either way, Georgians are shocked when I tell them that Americans don’t make compote or jam. The only person I know in America who makes jam, is my cousin. I think she picked up it up as a hobby years ago once and I’m pretty sure that hobby died down now that she is a busy, young mother. It just isn’t a thing. Americans don’t have a room dedicated to store the jam and compote like Georgians do.
As far as I know, there is no watermelon compote or jam. Thank goodness, because it will give me a chance to miss it until next summer. Until then, I counting down for fall to start.