Texas Gatorade. Photo by mollyjade. Licensed under creative commons

Last week I wanted a root beer. But I’m still old-fashioned and too embarrassed to pay $1.39 with my credit card, so I needed to stop at the ATM for cash. The nearest ATM is by the Wednesday farmers’ market, where they were selling beautiful watermelons.

“Red or yellow?” the young girl at the stand asked me.

Sometimes I love unexpected choices. Yellow, please!

That’s how Wednesday afternoon I ended up with a yellow watermelon, no root beer, and no idea what to do with a yellow watermelon.

I cut about half of it into chunks, with the idea that I’d actually eat it if there were no preparation required (so far, this has worked pretty well). The girl who sold me the watermelon said that yellow melon is sweeter. It doesn’t seem any sweeter to me. And it tastes…less red? (Somewhere out there, a food scientist is laughing with glee. “Another person accepting red as a flavor!”) Somehow or another, the flavor is much milder than I expected. And the color is much closer to neon green than yellow.

So I had half of a mild-tasting neon green watermelon to use up. I cut the remaining half into large chunks, threw them in the blender, and watched the melon change into neon green mush. A trip through a strainer, and I had a quart of watermelon juice and a cup or so of pulp to throw into a smoothie.

I had originally planned to make some sort of margarita with the juice, but the brilliant color demanded something else. We combined the watermelon juice with vodka and midori, a neon green melon liqueur. Yes, please!

Texas Gatorade

2 parts vodka
1 part midori melon liqueur
4 parts yellow watermelon juice

Texas Waterade

1 part yellow watermelon juice
1 part citrus soda