January 18: Let Them Eat Cake-- I'll Have Salad!

This is not a salad. I know that you know it's not a salad, I just want you to know that I know it's not a salad. It's an upside-down cake I baked for dessert tonight. This is one of my favourite things to make for company, and it's always appreciated (especially if there's ice cream!). I just put some fruit in 9x13 cake pan, add some brown sugar and a little melted butter, and pour on yellow cake batter (it works with a mix, but this one was home-made.) When my children were tiny, I used to make this with berries they picked. It takes forever to pick enough berries for a pie, but you only need 2 cups to make an upside-down cake. Since it is the middle of winter, this time I used fruit from a can. I had about half a can each of pineapple and apricot left over, so I decided to make a fruit salad for myself.

This is a salad. I just used what fruit I had on hand, and it turned out great. I bought the melon a few days ago, and had my doubt about its ripeness, but it was perfect: firm but not hard, sweet and juicy. I never know whether a melon is ready. I see people knocking on them or squeezing them or smelling them, and I've tried doing all three, but the melons refuse to give up their secrets. In the end, it seem that it all comes down to luck. This was a really ugly melon on the outside, but the inside made up for it. This is often true of people too, but with people, I usually find that once you start to see the inner beauty, the outer ugliness begins to fade away and I realize I was mistaken; it was my imagination, or a trick of the light that made me think they were ugly.

If there was ever a part of me that thought it preferred cake to fruit salad, it's long gone. Cake smells lovely, but just the thought of eating it makes my stomach clench. You might say that I've seen its inner ugliness. My guests enjoyed the cake, but the salad was a perfect dessert for me, and the other half of it made a yummy breakfast.

Recipe:
Halve a melon and scoop out the seeds. Take a sharp knife and score a grid pattern into the flesh of the melon, cutting to within an inch of the peel. Use a spoon to scoop out the cubes, mix in chunks of whatever fruit you have on hand, and pile it into the melon shell. I used a half-can each of pineapple chunks and apricots, 3 sugar mandarins, and a banana, which made enough to fill both halves of the cantaloupe.