Today’s selection for my Market Matters post from the Hollywood Farmers Market is another melon. What can I say? They are so seasonal and there is nothing better than a perfectly ripe melon.

This time I have chosen a Persian melon, also known as Patelquat. Which is a large greenish muskmelon with delicate netting on the rind and a rich salmon-colored flesh. It looks a bit like a larger more oval shaped cantaloupe, though it is usually much more fragrant. Persian melons are bigger than a cantaloupe too. They typically weigh around 5 pounds. Naturally they have a delicious, sweet flavor. I think they taste like a much more intense cantaloupe. In Southern California they're available from July through October, with a peak in the late summer.

As with all melons choose Persian melons that are heavy for their size, and very fragrant. They should be firm with a small amount of softness at the stem end. The rind should be the palest of green with netting that is slightly brown when ripe. If the background is very green the melon is not yet ripe. Persians are best vine ripened, but if you mistakenly get a green one let it sit on the counter at room temperature for a few days. Ripe melons should be refrigerated and will keep as long as two weeks if uncut.

To be human is to ponder. Can squash be art? Is zucchini life?

One is a question, the other a metaphor. But, I had time to contemplate such things because I had a particularly spectacular walk down the hill to the Hollywood Farmers Market this morning. It was such a typically spring Southern California morning. Which means there was a touch of gray in the air; what some people erroneously (even on the news) call fog.

But really it is called a marine layer, or inversion layer. If you live anywhere near a very large body of water you probably know what I am talking about.

Here in Los Angeles the inversion layer is particularly pronounced in spring. Some call it May Gray or June Gloom. But these are rather dreary monikers because this morning fog has its own special charm I think. Partly because you can count on it “burning off” by lunchtime, leaving you with some of the prettiest blue skies LA is capable of producing.

But what I really like best about these mornings is the special kind of “hush” that falls over the city. I don’t mean hush like quiet. LA is never quiet. There is always a certain low buzz or hum that permeates the atmosphere (11 million people are incapable of producing complete silence). But there is a gentleness in the atmosphere that envelopes everything.

I have made this cook book available in my OpenSky Shop. Just CLICK here to be taken straight there.

"Food Porn" just what does that mean? Where did the phrase even come from? I find the casual use of that term mildly disturbing and a bit inappropriate. It's not that I am a prude in any way (at all), but it does seem a bit disrespectful to actual pornography. Because it indicates a snobbish sort of elitism– a bit of tongue-in-cheek wryness designed to let the reader know just how hip we foodies think we must be. Do we really need to let the world know how cool and open-minded we are by embracing "pornography" in this superior way? Oh the irony of it, because (it seems to the world) that we foodies see pornography as – well, bourgeois.

Though to be fair, I suppose the term got its start because many of the same carnal (animalistic) instincts are tickled by both varieties of porn. Still food porn can embarrass me in a way that the other kind cannot.

Understanding the etymology of the term might help me embrace it and come to know what it means. Which may help me see why I find the term so ridiculous.