Last week, I posted a “Second Slice” entry that asked an important question: Why don’t people carve watermelons at Halloween? After paying a visit to my local grocery store here in Pennsylvania this weekend to purchase a watermelon for this week’s “Featured Watermelon Carving” (a rabbit), I discovered perhaps the most compelling reason for the absence of watermelon jack-o-lanterns – they don’t sell watermelons during Halloween.
It’s true! It seems that once pumpkins make their debut in early October, the watermelons disappear. Gone was the bin full of watermelons that once sat proudly near the entrance of my local grocery store, and gone was the display of watermelons at the back of the produce section. Gone, gone, gone.
Oh sure, there were pumpkins as far as the eye could see. Big pumpkins, small pumpkins, medium-sized pumpkins. There were even a bunch of really tiny pumpkins no bigger than a peach which, I’m assuming, were for babies to carve.
But no watermelons.
So it looks like my monthly featured watermelon carving will have to wait until those bins of watermelon return in the spring. For now, however, I’m happy to report that sliced and wedged watermelon is still available in my grocery store (and many others).
To satisfy my urge to carve something, I bought a big pumpkin and, later that evening, I carved it into a rather frightful jack-o-lantern. I would have carved it into the bunny rabbit I was planning for this month’s watermelon carving, but I’ll save that idea for an Easter-themed creation next spring.
In the meantime, you’ll be happy to know that mini watermelons are usually on sale throughout the year and there are even a few carvings that use these pint-sized versions (this snowman might make an appearance here on the blog next month). And if you really need a whole full-sized watermelon, the shrink-wrapped wedges sold throughout the year usually start out as a whole watermelon, so feel free to ask your store’s produce manager if they’ve got any in the back.