Meatless Monday: The Tasty Bite

Tasty Bite with full-size utensils

My latest market find, discovered at CitySeed a couple of Saturdays back, is a melon called the Tasty Bite. Much smaller than the seedless watermelon marketed as a “personal-sized melon,” the Tasty Bite is true to its name — a compact ball packed with a few mouthfuls of sweet deliciousness.

The Tasty Bite is a relatively new melon bred by crossing an ananas (an heirloom melon with a taste reminiscent of pineapple) with a Charentais (a cantaloupe with a juicy, fragrant flesh, that originated in the Poitous-Charentes region of France circa 1920). The result is a cantaloupe-like melon with orange flesh and a green outer ring and an above-average shelf life. The Tasty Bite is ripe 70-80 days from planting, a perfect fit for New England which has a shorter growing season than the Deep South, where a number of locales claim the distinction of being “watermelon capital of the world.” 

Inside a Tasty Bite 

The Tasty Bite is a perfect melon for a lunchbox treat. Look for it at the market while summer is still here. If you have plenty of sun in your yard and want to try to grow it yourself, you will find Tasty Bite at Johnny’s Selected Seeds and a number of other online purveyors.

Enjoy!

Happy Monday. Thanks for reading. 

I often blog on food, food issues, or topics related to growing things on Monday in support of Meatless Monday, one of several programs developed in the Healthy Monday project, founded in 2003 in association with Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Communications. Meatless Monday’s goal is “to help reduce meat consumption 15% in order to improve personal health and the health of our planet.”

Saturday Shorts: Honest Tea's TeaEO Weighs in…

Seth Goldman’s Reflections on Being a Member of the Coke Family

A couple of posts ago I reported on CA Prop 37, which calls for mandatory labeling of all genetically modified food sold in California. I included some graphics which show the major players for and against the measure.

The Organic Consumers Association has called for a boycott of a number of well-known organic product lines owned by the opposition. One of those targeted is Honest Tea, owned by Coca-Cola for the past 15 months. Honest Tea was the first tea company to introduce a USDA-certified organic bottled tea, as well as the first to make a Fair Trade Certified bottled tea. The company’s Honest Kids products do not contain any high fructose corn syrup. In fact, Honest Tea refused to yield to pressure from parent company Coca-Cola to remove the “no high fructose corn syrup!” language from the Honest Kids packaging.

Proposition 37 and the call for a boycott have prompted some interesting discussions at Honest Tea. Co-Founder Barry Nalebuff alerted me to an article just published by co-founder Seth Goldman, the company's current TeaEO. 

Before you go cold turkey on your Honest Tea habit, you might want to consider what Seth has to say on the subject. 

I propose an alternative to the boycott – Continue to buy the organic products sold by the opposition, but be sure NOT to buy any of their other lines. And let the corporations know exactly how and where you are (or are not) spending your money.

If you have time, continue on to Seth's next post to read what he had to say about Mayor Bloomberg’s ban on large, sugary drinks. It is good to be reminded that there is usually more than one side to any story.

Why Saturday Short Subjects? Some readers may recall  being dropped at the movie theater for the Saturday matinee — two action-packed feature films with a series of short subjects (cartoons or short movies, sometimes a serial cliffhanger) sandwiched in between. Often the short subjects were the most memorable, and enjoyable, part of the morning. That explains the name. The reason behind these particular posts is that we are all short on time. My Short Subject posts should not take me as long to write or you as long to read (or try).

Saturday Short Subjects: Aveeno…

…to the Rescue

Dang! You just scuffed the toe of your dress shoes. You are on the road, minutes away from an important commitment, and the shoe polish did not make it into your traveling bag. You do, however, have a tube of Aveeno.

You, my friend, are in luck. Aveeno Daily Moisturizing Lotion with Natural Colloidal Oatmeal is an excellent remedy for dry, itchy skin. It also works wonders on mildly scuffed shoe leather. Just put a little on your fingertip and rub it gently into the roughed-up spot. The blemish will soon disappear.

GoodGuide gives this product a high rating – a 10 for Health – stating that it contains no ingredients that raise any health concerns. Aveeno is made by Johnson & Johnson Consumer Products Company. The Environmental Working Group issued a press release on August 15, congratulating Johnson & Johnson on its announcement of a groundbreaking new initiative to reformulate many of its personal care products, including baby shampoo, to remove chemicals of concern to consumers. 

All the more reason to give this tip a try. 

Have a great weekend.

Why Saturday Short Subjects? Some readers may recall  being dropped at the movie theater for the Saturday matinee — two action-packed feature films with a series of short subjects (cartoons or short movies, sometimes a serial cliffhanger) sandwiched in between. Often the short subjects were the most memorable, and enjoyable, part of the morning. That explains the name. The reason behind these particular posts is that we are all short on time. My Short Subject posts should not take me as long to write or you as long to read (or try).