My daughter and I used to joke that we heard the cantaloupes calling to us from the grocery store display, saying, “Pick me! I’m hard and tasteless!” We did and they were.
In August, I opened a beautiful melon and found it rotten inside. When I told this to the customer service fellow at the food coop, he said, “Do you want a refund or do you want to take another chance?”
“I don’t want to take a chance,” I said. “I want to take a lesson!” He took me to the produce manager who took me to the pile of cantaloupes. There, he picked up each one for a sniff test.
“If it smells like a cantaloupe, it’s too ripe,” he said. “If it has no smell, it needs time on the kitchen counter.”
“Thanks very much,” I said and decided that nobody really knows for sure.
“Hey! Pick me! I’m hard and tasteless!”
