I don’t know why but since childhood I didn’t like eating fruits. Baba always used to get seasonal fruits. He loved mangoes and was a great connoisseur of mangoes. The names himsagar, fojli, lyangra, totatapuri used to become household names in summers. For summers, there was jamrool (wax apple), lichu (lychee), naspati (pear) and many more. As a kid, we used to stay at a rented house which had a large jamrool and lychee tree. With friends, sometimes I would have tasted these fruits but only for the thrill of plucking a fruit from tree and more to be ‘in’ the group. Then there was watermelon. Watermelon Juice came much later.
Watermelon or Tormuj.
In summers, watermelon was compulsory. Tormuj in Bengali and tarbuj in hindi, watermelon is a very popular summer fruit. Come summers, all the vegetable sellers will have heaps of watermelon stacked up in the shops. When I accompanied Baba for vegetable markets, both the seller and him would tap on the watermelon to find out the health quality of the watermelon. In shops, they would easily cut it into halves with a large knife but at home, Ma used to face the challenge. The challenge was managing such a huge fruit with her Bonti. The traditional curved blade used for cutting, chopping in a Bengali kitchen and was a wonder tool. Cut into cubes, with a refreshing feeling around it – Watermelon was ready for everyone.
Watermelon Juice
I liked the taste of watermelon but the reason why I slowly moved away from it was the issue of managing the fruit while eating. The pieces used to be quite large in size. The pulp is normally on a bed of green thick outer layer and by the time you reach the base, it was almost scraping the fruit from the bed. Then there were innumerable seeds around which interrupted the flow of eating. There was no provision of making watermelon juice at home during those times hence that was out of question. Madhushree always complains that I don’t eat enough fruits. It’s more of setting an example for the kids rather than my health I suppose. This summer I wanted to make it different.
Here are few summer drinks which you can also try . Click on the pictures
Bael Panna is a very popular Summer drinks
Iced tea with lemon grass and ginger
Watermelon juice and Watermelon mint lemonade.
We made Aam Pora shorbot earlier and if someone is averse to eating raw mangoes like Baba was, then one can try this. So one fine day I tried my hand with watermelon juice. Since it’s a watermelon juice, we separated the seeds in the beginning. One uncomfortable factor of mine is ruled out. It’s easy and simple to make watermelon mint lemonade and the recipe is at the bottom. At the end, I added club soda and the foam which gets formed on top leaves a real refreshing feeling. There were many queries on whether one can turn this to a mocktail – well I will definitely try that quickly.
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Watermelon Mint Lemonade
Ingredients
- 2 cups chopped watermelon cubes de-seeded
- 4- 5 nos mint leaves
- 1 no lemon
- 1 bottle club soda optional
- sugar as per taste
Instructions
- Blend watermelon cubes, sugar, mint leaves and juice of the lemon together.
- In a glass, take some ice cubes and fill it half way with the watermelon juice.
- Then top it with club soda. Alternately, you can also use sprite or use only watermelon juice
- Garnish with mint leaves and serve chilled.
Pikturenama is a blog about our travel and food escapades along with stories to share through photography. 
