Food Rant: I Hate Honeydew Melon

Posted on June 2nd, 2009 2:03pm by Nancy Nichols
Filed under Food Fight!, Hippie revolutions, Murmur

Like the headline says, I hate honeydew melon.

I can hear my all of my nieces reprimanding me as I type: “Hate is a bad word, Uncle Nancy.” Yes, they call me Uncle Nancy, but that is another story.

I’ve taught my nieces that hate is a bad word. But now I’m teaching them about exceptions. Disliking honeydews is a perfectly good example of when hate is an appropriate emotion. Don’t you feel hatred when you pay $7 for a fruit salad and it is  63% honeydew melon? I don’t care if it is grown in Texas, high in vitamin C, or has zero carbon footprints,  it tastes like, well, nothing. Honeydew is to fruit what particle board is to Macassar ebony. If I had nothing to do, I would start an “I Hate Honeydew” Facebook page. But I have lots to do and I have to put this honeydew down the disposal before I can get back to work.

30 comments

  1. Amen, sister.

    @ 2:20 pm on June 2, 2009

  2. I, myself, am starting a movement to rid Fruit Salad of honeydew. It’s a filler fruit. Give me more canteloupe (or however you spell it), watermelon, strawberries, grapes and pineapple.

    That’s right I’m an anti-melonite!

    @ 2:23 pm on June 2, 2009

  3. Now for all those who are going to remind me that canteloupe and watermelon are, indeed, melons, I’ll just say anti-melonite sounded a lot better than anti-dewite.

    @ 2:24 pm on June 2, 2009

  4. Uncle Nancy is as right about this as she has ever been about anything. Honeydew isn’t gross, but it is utterly without merit.

    @ 2:30 pm on June 2, 2009

  5. I love it! Canteloupe is the true evil. It infects all the other fruits in a fruit salad with it’s cloying sweetness & disgusting aftertaste. Bleh.

    @ 2:50 pm on June 2, 2009

  6. I love me some honeydew melon. When there’s a fruit tray at a business breakfast, I can generally have my fill of it because no one else is touching it. I don’t get what’s not to like.

    Now, as for ratios in fruit salads – I prefer to have all available fruits well represented, so I can understand that gripe.

    @ 3:07 pm on June 2, 2009

  7. Not many people are honeydew fans but they are in fruit salads for their pretty green color. Kiwi also works but is usually too expensive and green grapes don’t work because there are already purple grapes (for the color!) in the salad. Until another green fruit is invented the fruit salad will always contain honeydew.

    @ 3:11 pm on June 2, 2009

  8. when they are ripe they are great but most of the time they are unripe, bland , hard and tasteless.

    @ 3:12 pm on June 2, 2009

  9. I was just saying this yesterday. So funny! They are never good. when are they ripe???

    @ 3:19 pm on June 2, 2009

  10. Well at least they don’t put bananas in fruit salad anymore. You can pick out the honeydew without it tainting the entire salad. But when a banana touches another piece of fruit, it’s ruined.

    @ 3:24 pm on June 2, 2009

  11. When honeydew is ripe, I think it’s fantastic. It’s not hard to identify a good one. If you hear seeds slosh when you shake it and it has a sweet smell, odds are it’s delicious.

    @ 3:41 pm on June 2, 2009

  12. A “food reviewer” who gets pre-cut/made fruit salad…hmmm kind of dubious.

    Heres an idea: Next time you need a light snack on the go, dont stop at 7-11. And if you do, get an egg salad sandwich.

    BTW: ripe honeydew is delicious.

    @ 3:50 pm on June 2, 2009

  13. Uncle Nancy hasn’t had her distemper shot this month.

    @ 4:09 pm on June 2, 2009

  14. I’m with you. I find them to be generally without merit. Not that I’d pay a fruit salad that had any.

    @ 4:23 pm on June 2, 2009

  15. Glenn Campbell: So right. Unacceptable. Why, I thought Nancy grew all her fruits and veggies in a garden out back next to the chickens and pigs she raises to slaughter for her all her meals (the majority of which she prepares sous vide, of course). The mere notion that Nancy would deign to STOP at a CONVENIENCE STORE for a healthy snack that wasn’t personally made for her by Stephan Pyles or cut by her own hand as the sun was rising over her chicken coop is something I just can’t fathom, either.

    @ 4:47 pm on June 2, 2009

  16. Glenn, tell that to Kathleen’s Sky Diner.

    @ 4:54 pm on June 2, 2009

  17. Honeydew???? HoneyDON’T!!!!! I’m with ya on this one Uncle Nancy!! And it’s not a coincidence that it also has an equally gross alternate name muskmelon. I’m a boycotter of the “dew”.

    @ 5:03 pm on June 2, 2009

  18. @ Sarah is good. ;)

    @ 5:10 pm on June 2, 2009

  19. Y’all haven’t had some fresh, ripe dew then. Most honeydew is crunchy and tasteless. But when one is ripe it is sweet and fragrant. Same thing with cantaloupe; if it’s picked and sliced too early it’s crunchy and bland. Left to ripen it’s wonderful.

    @ 5:56 pm on June 2, 2009

  20. Glenn Campbell go eat some bad fried chicken. Or salmon. Ever since I read about honeydews i have been singing the silly ringo song. do the FB page!

    @ 6:34 pm on June 2, 2009

  21. Honeydew is generally supplied by the “big name suppliers”, who everyone knows, but I won’t mention. And most of the time it really sucks because of reasons mentioned above.

    I have vines growing right now(organic and mostly sustainable) that are just now budding flowers. If all goes well I’ll supply NN with a sample that’ll “flip her” in August.

    Nancy, look for a delivery in late summer or call me out.

    @ 7:42 pm on June 2, 2009

  22. Tasting a good honeydew melon (which I learned how to pick watching Martha Stewart a few years ago) is like a kiss in the moonlight beside a tranquil lagoon awash in the nocturnal fragrance of moist gardenias freshly sprinkled by the moonlit mist while the sound of lovebirds warble invisibly in the palmetto grottos.

    @ 9:40 pm on June 2, 2009

  23. Someone had their grumpy thong on today hating both honeydew and sprinkles cupcakes. BTW, my favorite flavor of sprinkles cupcake would be honeydew if they had it.

    @ 10:20 pm on June 2, 2009

  24. I didn’t say I hated Sprinkles, I said they gave me a stomach ache. Too much fettuccine Alfredo gives me a stomach ache as well.

    @ 10:33 pm on June 2, 2009

  25. I thought Honeydew was known as the “money melon” …or am I confusing my SD posts?

    @ 9:36 am on June 3, 2009

  26. These comments are cracking me up! I don’t like honeydew either.

    @ 1:42 pm on June 4, 2009

  27. I think honeydews used to taste better. The growers have bred in firmness and sacrificed flavor. Ripe honeydew doesn’t belong in fruit salads. It’s too delicate like a ripe strawberry or pear. Once it’s cut, you need to eat it quick. Brent, yours sound wonderful. Sadly I have neither sun nor yard for melon growing.

    @ 11:53 pm on June 4, 2009

  28. Honeydew is to melon what Iceberg is to lettuce.

    @ 1:31 pm on June 5, 2009

  29. i hate themm. not because they’re tasteless but exactly because of their taste. its sweet but not a pleasant sort of sweet. its bland and the after taste is horrible. bad fruit. eeew grosss ugh

    @ 12:12 am on February 12, 2010

  30. quoting Amy Derjue ‘the fruit salad. Which was comprised of several grapes, several chunks of pineapple, a bunch of watermelon, a bunch of orange melon, a bunch of green melon, and a half-slice of orange.
    I ate the orange, the grapes and the pineapple chunks happily. I suffered through the watermelon, which usually isn’t that bad, but it had soaked up the flavors of the other melons and tasted like ass. I tried to keep in mind all the fibery, sweet goodness of fruit, but hocked the rest of the bowl, which was about three-quarters of the fruit salad. I even asked Kristen if she wanted some, but she said “I hate melon.”
    For the love of Christ and reindeer, why the hell do people put melon in fruit salad? Melon is gross. It tastes like an absence of flavor. It has a bizarre consistency. Nobody likes melon. People eat out the good stuff and chuck the melons. The melons give their life in vain. I mean, I know the practical reason why restaurants put melon in the fruit salad– it’s cheap and takes up a lot of space. But it’s gross. I’d much rather have a small bowl of delicious fruits mixed together than a huge vat of ass-tasting melon with some good stuff tossed in for color. “

    @ 12:19 am on February 12, 2010