Happy National Watermelon Day! Yes, every year on August 3, a whole day is devoted to that favorite, refreshing, summertime fruit - watermelon!
Being that it's on a Monday this year, hubby and I decided to celebrate the day before, giving us more time to prepare some very delicious watermelon themed dishes, and enjoy them in our backyard.
The day started with a normal breakfast, though I'll confess I taste tested a few watermelon chunks as I cut up the ingredients for the first dish, a Watermelon Feta Salad.
This recipe from Delish.com is super easy, and delicious! Chunks of watermelon, cucumber, red onion, and mint combine with an olive oil and red wine vinegar dressing for a surprisingly tasty salad. Since there's only two of us in the house, I made a third of the recipe, which we promptly finished off, wanting more. I know I'll be making this salad again later this week!
The next watermelon recipe I put together was a Watermelon-Basil infused water, which I found at allparenting.com. This one is super simple - a cup of cubed watermelon, 2-3 sprigs of basil, and 4 cups of cold water. Put it in a pretty pitcher to chill before serving, then enjoy a refreshing drink, complete with a few chunks of watermelon and basil leaves.
Keeping with the theme of the day, we pulled out the Watermelon Delight quilt, and had a picnic in a shady area of the backyard - how fun is that!
We feasted on fried chicken, watermelon feta salad, and carrots, all the while toasting our current good health with the watermelon basil water. Content to stay put, we finally wrapped it up with a few slices of juicy watermelon.
After lunch, we starting prepping for dinner. With more watermelon dishes of course!
The dinner menu leads off with a watermelon and cucumber gazpacho, a recipe I found in the Sunday newspaper. Since I already had all of the ingredients, I set to work making this twist on a favorite cold soup to give it plenty of time to chill.
After a couple hours, we couldn't resist sneaking a taste - WOW! was that ever a good gazpacho!
The main course consisted of grilled chicken-watermelon tacos. I used rotisserie chicken, warmed corn+flour tortillas, and a watermelon salsa from goodhousekeeping.com.
Just look at that mouth watering chicken/watermelon salsa taco, topped with queso fresco!
Oh! Can't forget to tell about those the margaritas, right? A few hours before dinner, I cubed up watermelon and strawberries, putting them in a single layer on a plate to freeze. That way, those margaritas blended up cold and slushy.
Again, we were outside for dinner but this time at the table to enjoy the Watermelon Twist table runner, though it was a tough choice between the Watermelon Twist or Whatamelon runner. It sure was a pretty view - the red watermelon slices on that runner kept drawing our attention as we sipped on our strawberry/watermelon margaritas.
What a great ending to Watermelon Day!
Happy Quilting everyone!
