Pickled Watermelon Rinds

Pickled watermelon rinds are a bitch. They are  precisely the kind of bitch that orders sulfite free wine when you go out to eat and then insists on ordering veal because she is an animal rights activist and she wants to only eat the old sheep. But she's got a great rack and she's nice to show around so you go on a date with her only when you've forgotten why you couldn't stand her in the first place.

 I mean, it's not that they are particularly hard to make.  It's just that they are tedious as all mother fucking hell.

But it's a Southern delicacy, so whatayagonnado?

To start to make these things you need a watermelon. A big fat one is better than some little topiary round anemic thing  engineered to have no seeds. A big fat old fashioned watermelon is going to have the most rind on it and that is what you are after. The rind. Think of it like an Oakland butt.

First things first, scoop out all that red stuff in the middle. You don't need to scrape the edges bare. A little red looks nice when left on the rind. You can set the fruit aside for whatever other awesome thing you want to do with it. Jello-shots? Watermelon margaritas? fruit pops? I don't know. You can figure that out.

Now starts the bitch of the process. You have to cut all that green off the rind in order to render it fit for eating. This takes a really really long time and it helps if you have a friend to help you because if you don't it's going to suck for you.

I'll wait until you are done. Don't worry. I'm just going to start working on this painting over here.

Okay! I've finished my portrait of Mike in the traditional Dutch Masters style! Are you done yet? No? A little more time?

I'm back from my getting my hair cut and colored and I love my new pedicure!  You are done, yes? Hooray! Let's celebrate by going to the next step. You are going to take all that shit and soak it in water overnight! Yay!

The next day you are going to make a brine for these things. You will need to procure a giant pot and put in as much water as it looks like will cover what you have there. You'll then add in a lot of sugar. Would you say a cup and a half? I didn't measure. I  just put in the whole rest of the sugar bag I had since I've had it around for a bit. but then it wasn't sweet enough so I had to put in some sugar cubes I had lying around.  You will need to throw in a small handful of cloves and around three cinnamon sticks. Also some salt. I put in a little vanilla extract, some brine water left over from brining my jackfruit last night and a handful of  dried cherries, just because they looked festive. Of yeah, and a little tamarind paste because I bought it and I think it sounds really cool. You don't have to do any of this, though. You do want your water sweet/salty and tasting like Christmas without the brandy ( I know, I know) and as much salt as your Gramma Mildred's mouth.

All of this should simmer a bit. I'm letting mine simmer while I cut and gut the jalapenos. Traditional recipes do not call for chili peppers in the mix, but what the hell. I ask you, is anything truly not improved through the addition of chili peppers?

Remember! Always wear gloves when putting your fingers in new or unusual orifices! It's just good sense.

I'm going with a half now / half later approach. Half the sliced jalapenos go in with the pickling water and half are saved in vinegar in the fridge for tomorrow. And, yes! You are going to need to do another overnight process!

With jalapenos added and then water all cooled, Take your rinds, clear off the water and then dump them in this new mixture to soak overnight. You'll go to sleep excited to know that you have more day of work waiting for you tomorrow.

This next day, you are sure to have a bad hangover from drinking so much while trying to get these damn watermelon rinds finished, but like a champion you get back on that horse girl! You fix yourself a bloody mary and you keep on running because stamina is what it is all about, Sugar!

And speaking of sugar, I sure hope that you kept some on hand since we need that for round three.
You are going to take those rinds and dump out all that lovely brine mix down the bathtub drain since the rest of your kitchen is absolutely destroyed from your other cooking endeavors and you can't possibly fit that collander in the sink anymore. Just repeat after me, dishes are for husbands and husbands will clean all those dishes on their day off tomorrow.

So, you will need to rinse all the brine on those watermelon bits off using your detachable shower head. No. I 'm not making a euphemism when I say "watermelon" and "brine." Haven't you been following along on this recipe already? Now pay attention!  You fill the pot with just enough water to cover those bits. Then you put the whole thing on the stove again and bring it to a boil. This is going to boil for ten minutes before you .... guess what! Ha! No, bitch, you are not done. Put down that victory flag! You are going to pour all that out water again and rinse those little fuckers off one more time.

Okay, breathe. You are really near the finish line again. Did you refresh your Bloody Mary? Good.
Put the rinds all back in the pot. Slice into pretty little wheels two large oranges and four lemons. Some recipes call for more cinnamon and cloves. I say, ditch that. I mean, unless you really WANT to be reminded of the forced tortures of family bonding that are the holidays during your summer.  No, we are adding the jalapenos, plus three cups of sugar... except that I forgot to buy more sugar so I used two cups of brown sugar and a cup of agave. It should be okay. It's all sugar. Then you add one cup of apply cider vinegar and one cup of lilly white vinegar to mix all up with that molasses. You need just enough water to cover the whole mess in fluid and then it time to boil those little bastards all over again.   They are going to take a lot longer to boil with all that damn sugar in there, but you should be too inebriated to care at this point. You should also make sure that you are too inebriated to start questioning yourself as to what the point of this whole long and torturous exercise. Torture your liver, not your mind. Studies show that livers bounce back faster from abuse.

Once this mix has boiled for fifteen minutes or so, you are now done. Really done. As in "Hallelujah! Oh my gawd I thought that would never end and now I am done!" done. Don't celebrate too quickly by eating a rind or you will cause a blister to form on your lower lip and just your lower lip will look like Kim Bassinger's. Just relax and enjoy your booze marathon while your little babies cool.

You can proceed canning them now. I mean, that is if you are some sort of goddamn masochist, you can. And I don't mean the fun kind, either. I mean the kind that delights in using their tongue as a sort of button hook when fastening their Master's Victorian boots. I don't have patience for that kind of shit. Me, I just fed a few to my friend  to make sure they were not poisonous and then I froze the rest to take up to Queen Acres. They turned out awesome. Just like when I turned out that fine little sulfite free lovin' mamma onto San Pablo and she started bringing some real cash back for me. Now *that* was a can worth the investment.

*if serving them  fresh, serve as is. If serving them later,  toss the citrus and rinse the melon slices several times in cold water or they will be cloyingly sweet.

How to Make Soup!

      First you make soup by getting out a really large ass pot.  You are going to need a pot because a pan is too small to make soup in and you can't make soup on a plate. You are going to use a large ass pot because everything that might go bad in your fridge, barring a few items and adding a few others, is going to go into that pot. You should adjust the size of "large ass" to fit your personal needs. If you, say, live in Oakland, what might be a "large ass" for someone else might be a medium sized or small ass to you, particularly if that other person lives in, say, Mendocino County. I hear that there is a lot of speed there. For the hipster boys that thought it would be fun to start an ironic frat house two doors down from you and play loud football in the street at 11pm on a Monday night, this might mean be the equivalent of a sauce pan.

     Onions and garlic go in first. They don't *have* to go in first. If you find you forgot to put them in first you can always put them in later.  It will really not make that much of a difference. But you want to put in the garlic and onion first if you are into that sauteing thing. Soup can be made without sauteing and it is fine, but today you are going to saute. Other cooking peoples say to saute in a frying pan or wok. This is bullshit unless you like cleaning more dishes.

It's important to add one fuckload of minced garlic and two fuckloads of chopped onions to the pot with no heat. Then you are going to add just south of a shitload of olive oil, or enough to coat everything on the bottom of the pan and turn on the heat. Don't turn on the heat before or you might burn your garlic. Burnt garlic sucks and you don't want it in your soup.

Tip: send your husband out to chop the onions in the backyard with goggles. This works way better than the other way you have been doing it.

Start to add some salt and pepper to your mix, then decide to use the Penzey's Ruth Ann's Muskego Ave. Chicken and Fish Seasoning, which is really a sort of lemon pepper salt thing and you have been putting it on most everything since you got it despite your original suspicion of it as being just glorified salt. Plus your mother-in-law got it for you.

Stir everything until the onions are no longer just white, but are now kind of a pearl color.

At this point it is really time to open the red wine. Pour in half a bottle. This is going to leave you and your husband with only a glass each and you are going to want more. You should have bought more, but you were thinking that one bottle of wine and one bottle of vodka would be enough last night. You were mistaken. So, plan a wine run in the middle of your soup making.

Pull everything veggie or meat that might go bad out of your fridge. Be sure to sniff the sausages and check if they have a sticky or slimy texture before chopping them up and putting them in the pot.

Tip: A bad smelling or slimy sausage is not something you should put in your pot. Tell your husband to shower or perhaps get that thing checked out by a qualified physician.

Potatoes go in early if you want a creamy texture of dissolved potato or late if you want chunks. Scrub well, but don't bother peeling them. Why would you peel them, anyway? Carrots should be peeled, however. You then add chopped bell peppers, tomatoes, turnips, and  yellow squash in the pot. You chop up some fresh basil and then realize you have to add the entire bunch because you chopped it on top of the sausage area and you can't put that shit back now because it might turn septic. So, the equivalent of a  fuckload of basil goes into the pot. You also add some Herbs de Provance because it sounds cool and your mother-in-law got it for you.

Your pot is now full. You will have to put the other vegetable back in the fridge. Hopefully you have added some water to the pot so you have a pot full of both  vegetables *and* boiling water or you might need to separate the batch into two pots. You don't have any broth, but Bragg's will do just fine. It's really the same thing anyway, right? And plus, look at the shiny hair!

Now you are ready for your wine run. Put it on simmer and tell your three cats to make sure the house doesn't burn down while you are gone.

Target is the place to go for the soup wine run. While there you can also pick up other things like lint brushes and attempt to find some sort of ginger matching foundation for your husband. Sadly, you find that Target, like MAC, has a bias against gingers and there is no foundation there for anyone with a pink based complexion. The MAC store clerk lied when she said that adding blush to the light foundation would convert it to a ginger hue. Instead, it converted your husband into a large carrot. Don't believe the MAC counter ladies.

You notice that there are a plethora of hot ladies at the Target. Was this always the case or did more ladies become hot as you hit your mid-thirties? When you realize that you said this out loud you notice that the woman in the yellow polka dot dress is quickly moving away from you and into the next aisle. Maybe this is because you have a little of the impetigo left over on your face which your cat gave you last month. It's not a good look.

There is a really hot Amazonianly tall giant red head of a woman in front of you and your husband at the check out line wearing only an oversized man's work shirt and cowboy boots. Your husband looks at you and says something about that being the way he wants to die. You hit him in the arm, but secretly you agree.You both decide it would be a bad idea to ask her if she knows anything about ginger foundation.

Back at home, you can now open the second bottle of wine.


Taste your soup. If it is a little bland,  add  one buttload of Bragg's and a half a bottle of the newly opened wine.

If your flavors are still off, add some of that spicy beer mustard that worked so well when you were making corned beef and some siracha because siracha goes in everything.  Stir and taste again. The flavors should now be starting to have a harmony. Add just a bit of thyme and this  thing called "Mural of Flavor" from Penzey Spices because the name sounds cool and your mother-in-law got it for you. You might add a lemon, but you do not have a lemon.

Boil down for an hour until the flavor is more concentrated and enjoy!