We Can’t Succeed All of the Time

I’ve made several delicious recipes I have found over at smitten kitchen. Yesterday, when I saw her post on agua fresca, I knew I wanted to try it — muscatine melons (local variety of cantaloupe) are in season right now, I’ve got a thing for summer beverages (as you know), and we had to do some school supply shopping (so a trip to the grocery store wouldn’t be out of our way).

Not one for much creativity when someone else has done all the work, I also made two kinds: orange from a muscatine melon, and green from a honeydew.

After their one-hour dripping, I was disappointed that so much of the melons was left behind as solids — it felt like a lot of waste to me. But, I kept calm and carried on, adding the lime juice, sugar, and salt.

At dinner-time (which had given the juice time to chill completely), I excitedly offered everyone their choice of green or orange juice. Everyone chose honeydew.

So I poured some into everyone’s glass, added seltzer water to fill the glass, and I added ice in mine to keep it super-cool.

Doesn’t it look lovely?

Well, it tastes like Pedialyte.

I’m hoping the muscatine version will taste better — since it’s local, I have a feeling it will have more flavor than the trucked-in honeydew. Sadly, I think I will be the only one drinking it. The girls were completely turned off by the taste (and I’m talking 1/4 teaspoon salt in the jar — it wasn’t very much at all!)