Just a bunch of melon heads!

We've had a bumper crop of cantaloupes recently! I love, love, LOVE cantaloupes and the variety we planted this year is exceptionally good. This year I tried just the plain Burpee Hybrid and Burpee Sweet and Early Hybrid. I got them at the Walmart seed display and I am more pleased with their production and flavor than I was with my heirloom varieties from last year!
Here's what I picked this morning:

The aroma in the kitchen is heavenly! Vine ripened melons smell as good as cut flowers in a room! Since we are going out of town soon, I needed to use this stuff up so I got online and found a neat little recipe for cantaloupe bread:

It doesn't taste like cantaloupe, per se, but it is extremely moist and tastes almost like cake! To make it a little healthier, I substituted half the white flour for whole wheat, added 1/3 cup ground flax seeds, and used raw sugar and honey. We also omitted the glaze for the top, you just don't need it, the bread is good as is!
We also made some melon pops. Just puree cantaloupe with a little bit of raw honey and freeze in an ice cube tray.

Actually, the puree tastes wonderful on it's own! I think if I added a ripe banana, some protein powder and milk that it would be an incredible smoothie!
And speaking of melons, we are now on watermelon watch '08! I planted my watermelons a little late this year but now we finally have some babies to tend to!

We planted three varieties. This one is a crimson sweet
and we cannot wait til he is full grown! I have the best memories of last summer when the kids sat out on the back porch eating watermelon and spitting seeds. I just love this time of year!