Watermelon Salad with Feta and Fresh Mint

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I'm back baby! (said me, not the watermelon salad)

I know, I know -  I should have called, I should have written.  But it's rare that we get a summer this outstanding where I live, and so I let myself downward spiral away from this blog and cartwheel (imaginary cartwheel because I never learned how to do a real one) towards BBQs, beer, golf, friends, family, weekend trips, backyard parties, important celebrations, one very productive closet overhaul where I offloaded four garbage bags of old clothes, and one extremely shockingly productive weekend gardening-o-rama where The Hubby, my mom, and I did all of the sprucing up to my house's back and front yard that we have been meaning to do since we moved in four years ago.  Please excuse my run-on sentence, but that was a lot of stuff.

How is the weather where you live, and do you want to talk about it, and then talk about the weather where I live, and how awesome it is, and how it is record-breaking?  OK.  During the entire month of July it didn't rain once, and it was sunny and hot and beer weather every single solitary day.  So far in August, there has been just one day of rain to freshen up all of the flowers again, and then we were right back into this sensational sun-shiny summer streak!  And since Vancouver has a relatively high latitude on Planet Earth, it means that we are getting about 16 hours of sunshine per day, with a quick 8-hour break for sleeping.  Also, I have a tan.  Well, I have a tan on the front of my body anyways, but if you were to pick one side, wouldn't it be the front side?

I'm getting to the part about the watermelon salad soon...I promise.

And with all of this hot weather, you might think to yourself that if your hot water tank were going to pick a time to blow (for the seventh time in four years) then now may be the time, because hey, a cold shower might feel really good right about now.  But trust me, it's not, especially when you can't add in even just a touch of warm water to take that icepick-like edge off.  And Day 1 isn't so bad, because you still have hope that it will be fixed by Day 2, especially with the repair guy coming that day.  But then the Day 1 repair guy doesn't know how to fix it (but still charges you a couple hundred dollars anyways) even though you have houseguests staying at your house that night and didn't tell them not to come because you thought the tank would be fixed before their arrival, and then Day 2 passes, and Day 3 comes and then Day 4, and by Day 5 The Hubby has started talking crazy about how we can really justify going to a $5,000 tankless hot water system, and you start thinking about how that is a really, really un-fun way to spend $5,000 that you don't have.  But then Day 6 comes, and the tank that you have is under warranty, and a new one is installed and even though I still haven't walked down the six stairs that it would require me to walk down to go look at it, I know it's in there all hot and watery and just working, and that warm shower has never felt better.  Special thanks to my parents for the loan of their hot water and Pert Plus on Days 4 and 5.

And none of this has anything to do with the recipe that I am posting today, which is for a Watermelon and Feta Salad that I made about three months ago but never got around to posting, but that doesn't matter.  This was made during my girls weekend away in Sechelt, during a newspapers-spread-all-over-the-table outdoor crab feast where we knew we would want a light, juicy, summery salad on the side to help wash down the bowl full of melted butter that we were using as a dip for our crab.

We went to a seafood shop that day, bought our three crabs, and got a lesson on how to clean and cook them, with an interactive portion of our visit where my friend Cleary actually cleaned two of the crabs herself in the back room of the seafood shop.

Here is my pal Cleary cleaning our fresh crab for dinner...she is woman, hear her roar!

This salad was also the brainchild of her, and couldn't be simpler...just four ingredients:  watermelon, feta cheese, fresh mint, and fresh squeezed lime juice, just as the title of the salad suggests.  Sometimes the simplest things are just the best.

Summer and watermelon are pretty much boyfriend and girlfriend...

 

Watermelon Salad with Feta and Fresh Mint

Serves: 6 side salads

Ingredients

• 1 mini watermelon, chopped into 1 or 2-inch squares
• 200 grams (1 small container or about 1/2 a pound) cow feta cheese, chopped into 1-inch squares
• 1 handful fresh mint, stems discarded, and leaves chopped into small pieces
• Juice of 1 lime

Note:  My pictures show the salad with finely diced red onion in it, but I don't prefer it this way, as I found that the red onion flavour was too strong, and so the watermelon took on the onion flavour in a way that was undesirable to me.

Directions

Combine the watermelon, feta cheese, and mint in a medium salad bowl, and squirt fresh lime juice over top.  Serve cold.

Recipe Source:  Cleary!

What Was Cooking on Playing With My Food One Year Ago:  Quinoa 'Mac' and Cheese