Gaya Melon

It’s been a great week for trying new types of produce.  Earlier this week I tried a cherimoya for the very first time, and now I have another new fruit to share.  Does anyone know what it is?

It’s a Gaya Melon!  Duh.  That’s also the title of this post.

If you want to get really technical, it’s an Ivory Gaya Melon.  There’s another type of Gaya Melon that has a dark green exterior, and it’s called a Chameleon Gaya Melon.  I just learned that from the interwebs – but at the store, this guy was labeled as a Gaya Melon, and since I had never heard of it before, I bought one.

I love that it’s about the same size as a large grapefruit or pummelo – the perfect size for a household of one.

I treated it like I do cantaloupes or honeydews – and let it sit on the counter while it ripened.  When it seemed ready to go (you can tell because the stem end of the melon gets soft and gives a little bit when you press it with your thumb), I cut off the top and bottom.  That’s when I noticed that the melon had a very thin skin.  Usually I would cut down the sides of the melon with my knife, removing the rind, but since this one was so thin, I used my wonderful peeler instead.  Here it is half done:

After I finished that, I cut it in half.  Here’s what the insides look like:

Yep.  Looks like a melon.

I scooped out the seeds and cut off a piece to try it.  And that’s when I learned, the hard way, that…

…the skin wasn’t so thin after all.  Under the skin, there’s a full-on rind, but it’s exactly the same color as the edible flesh.  How annoying is that?  So I went back with my knife and cut down the sides, trying to differentiate between flesh and rind (while the color the same, the texture is slightly different).

What a pain in the ass.  That’s strike one, gaya melon.

And now did it taste?  Not very good.  Not much flavor.  Not very sweet.  Kinda like a really boring, bad honeydew.  Nothing special.  Nothing that made me want to jump for joy or rush to write this post.  It’s complete mediocrity was especially annoying given the fact that I already been tricked by the melon into thinking the rind was edible.  Such trickery would be acceptable if the end result was delectable.  My gaya melon was not delectable.  That’s strike two.

After chopping it up into pieces, I ate about half the melon, and saved the other half for work the next day:

In this game of baseball, two strikes is enough.  The gaya melon is out.  I’m not gonna be buying another one.

Wanna see what other new fruits and veggies I’ve tried for the first time?  They’re all archived in My Favorite Posts at the top of the page!

Keep it up, David!