The Kebox Paradox

I'm forced to confess that I'm a babe in the woods when it comes to the produce department at the supermarket. I wander around there ooohing and aaahing at all the pretty fruits and vegetables and I have been known on many occasions to bring home some exotic plant material just because it had a funny color or funny shape or strange name.

Today was one of those days.

DS and I were shopping [I got the kid out of the house!] and we came across a huge crate of dark green bowling balls for sale. They were sitting next to a crate of odd looking objects that faintly resembled cantaloupes but with stripes. These things were solid dark green and they weighed a ton.

The sign above them said: KEBOX MELONS $3.99 each.

Okay. Not a bad price for a bowling ball. I conferred with DS who was noncomittal about trying a new and exotic fruit. He's always worried about getting a mouthful of something that doesn't taste good, so he often refrains from trying new things. Finally, being the adventurous Mom that I am, I talked him into it and we carefully lowered one of them into the cart, which immediately began to list to one side.

The thing was heavy. DS took it back out of the cart and hauled it over to the produce scale where it made the dial spin around wildly like a compass in the Bermuda Triangle. It landed on 9 pounds, which is awfully hefty for a melon. I knew this had to be good, so we lobbed it back into the cart and off we went to the checkout, both of us pushing the cart.

I got the thing home and spent some time just admiring it, imaging what jewelike flesh might appear once I cut it open. I fantasized about the exotic flavors we might discover and what interesting recipes I might find when I learned all the ins and outs of the mysterious KEBOX.

I brandished my carving knife and sliced...and found out I'd bought...
a watermelon.

Apparently whoever was in charge of writing signs at the supermarket could not separate the I and the C, thus smushing them together to form a K.

It was an Icebox melon. Sigh.

So there went my plan to conquer the new world of the exotic KEBOX. The upside is, I probably would have paid a lot more for it when I believed it was some alien fruit sensation, so $3.99 was stil a bargain.