<p>I’m thinking specifically of cantaloupes and honey dews, which IME are never ripe and rarely taste good. I’ve almost given up on them.</p>
<p>Lately I’ve been letting mangos and papayas sit on the counter until they’re about two days from being rotten. That seems to be when they taste best. </p>
<p>Apples, grapes, cherries – no problem They seem to always be fine when I buy them. </p>
<p>Tips, tricks and techniques?</p>
<p>Cantaloupes start smelling fruity when they are ripe and <em>give</em> a little when pressed. I also let them sit until it seems too long and then they are usually good. Honey dews, I haven’t figured out.</p>
<p>This year, the cantaloupes are not very good, in my opinion. Every one we have gotten hasn’t tasted good, and eventually has been tossed. Usually if they have a slight good smell on the end, and sound hollow when you knock on them, they are ripe. Ours have been ripe…but nasty!</p>
<p>Honeydew is a whole other issue. I feel the same way about watermelon. It’s a crap shoot! </p>
<p>OP, I agree with you about giving up on cantaloupe. I’m trying to train my husband to never bring home one from the grocery story, because they are always terrible.</p>
<p>First, buy local. Fruit that is shipped in has to be picked too green, and then it will never ripen properly.</p>
<p>To choose a cantaloupe, smell the end that was attached to the stem. It should smell like cantaloupe if it is ripe. I still leave it on the counter, because I don’t like hard cantaloupe.</p>
<p>To choose a good watermelon, slap the watermelon with your whole hand. If it sounds hollow, it’s good. This only works if you are buying a whole watermelon.</p>
<p>I do not buy any fresh fruit at the grocery store. I either purchase from roadside stands or the weekly market. Not only is the produce better, but it’s cheaper.</p>
<p>Never buy grapes when they are on sale at the grocery store. They are always inferior. There’s a reason they are on sale.</p>
<p>I admit to living in one of the best counties in the nation for great produce. I wish you could go to the market with me every Tuesday. You would be amazed at the quality of produce to choose from.</p>
<p>I think I should give up on pears. They never seem to ripen!</p>
<p>I smell them at the “belly button”. That’s the only thing I know. Also pineapple.
The rine on watermelon is too thick for this to work. </p>
<p>I smell my cantaloupe and then put it in a brown bag for a couple days when I bring it home. </p>
<p>Apparently with honeydews, you may be able to hear the seeds rattling around.</p>
<p>I think there is an aroma or the smell test.</p>
<p>Honeydews should have the sugar coming through the skin so that when you slide your fingers along it, there’s a bit of a grip. We also wait for honeydews and cantaloupes to be fragrant and to yield when pushed near the blossom end. </p>
<p>This summer we had the best luck with orange flesh honeydews. They seem very similar to melons marketed as temptation melons; smooth pale yellow rind, orange flesh with some green near the skin. Delicious and sweetly flavorful but not slimy or mushy as a very ripe honeydew can be.</p>
<p>I agree about watermelons. Slap them or tap them; I tap, hard, while holding the melon. If you hear and feel a Boing! kind of bouncy, hollow sensation, it’s good. If you hear a Thuck kind of dull sensation, it’s bad. Also, a watermelon rind should be absolutely firm, not yielding at all to pressure.</p>
<p>We eat a lot of melon.</p>
<p>I buy them at the farmer’s market, and ask the clerk to pick me a good one. They always take their time, and pick me a delicious melon.</p>
<p>I’ve gotten some good cantalopes recently. They need to sit out, but not for too long. Too long is when the underside has gone to mush. One soft spot is about right. I buy by the smell, even prior to ripening. Here in the Midwest, I actually prefer the shipped in rather than locally grown. Can’t think of any other fruit I’d say this about. </p>
<p>For those of you on the E coast, I have some sympathy, as yours must come from the west as well, and are that much greener/older. </p>
<p>Just shook my honeydew on the counter. Rind is hard as a rock. I don’t find that they soften much these days, counter to years ago. A little softness around an end seems to be about it for signs of ripening. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Now I just have to ask … What county is that (if you are comfortable saying)?</p>
<p>I guess this ties in with the advice to wait for the sugar to reach the outside of a honeydew, but I was told to look for one whose outside feels velvety soft like a baby’s bottom, not slickly smooth. I’d say this works about half the time, but oh, when a honeydew is ripe, there’s nothing like it, so I take my chances.</p>
<p>Another fruit I have trouble with is plums. I find if I buy them when they’re already getting quite soft, they taste great, but most of the ones in the store are hard as rocks, and they never ripen at home like other stone fruit.</p>
<p>Back when I lived in NYC, the Korean grocer on the corner would happily pick out my fruit for me (“for today” or “for tomorrow” he’d say). I miss that.</p>
<p>I’ve had trouble this year with nectarines, my favorite fruit. These fruit purveyors sometimes try to sell me a nectarine that is as hard as an apple. Yecch. Nectarines are supposed to be the kind of fruit you can’t eat inside, because they are so juicy and soft. </p>
<p>And speaking of apples, it’s about time that someone told the truth about Red “Delicious” apples, a fruit that is suitable for still lifes and nothing else: <a href=“The Awful Reign of the Red Delicious - The Atlantic”>The Awful Reign of the Red Delicious - The Atlantic;
<p><<<
I smell them at the “belly button”. That’s the only thing I know. </p>
<br>
<br>
<p>Yup, that’s what my mom taught us about cantaloupes. </p>
<p>the underside of the watermelon should be yellow, not white.</p>
<p>I gave up on melons till I tried the Sugar Kissed melon. I haven’t had a bad one yet. I prefer to by half watermelons so I can see the inside.
I get good fruit at the high end market. The fruit from Von’s/ Safeway is hit or miss. Mainly miss.</p>
<p>CF, I’ve known that truth for as long as I lived in WA, and I always avoid those apples that are made of 100% synthetic wax. Thank goodness our growers’ other varieties that have been planted years ago finally started to bear fruit!</p>
<p>Melons should have a faint, pleasant “melon-y” smell. Also, some varieties of melons will have a mesh-like pattern near the “belly button”. Watermelons should be absolutely firm, not squishy.</p>
<p>For ten years, every summer, I’ve been ordering boxes upon boxes of stone fruit – especially peaches and nectarines – from Frog Hollow Farm. They have always been beyond sublime UNTIL this year. Their whole pitch is that the fruit is tree-ripened which allows that deep peach aroma to develop. This year, however, several of the boxes received toward the end of the summer were extremely disappointing, with rock hard fruit that was as bad as the worst peach in the supermarket. So disappointing!!</p>
<p>The drought year may have been a difficult one for California stone fruit. None of the stone fruits in at my farmer’s market were good this year, and there are maybe ten different growers.</p>