I spent the day recently with my sister Linda to celebrate my birthday. I made cold veggie pizza and she made a spicy watermelon fries and dip recipe I’d been drooling over. She had to find coconut sugar for the dip , which neither of us had ever heard of. The recipe called for a few other things that were sort of unusual.  I give her much credit for hunting down the ingredients!

I called a local health food store in Linda’s town to find the coconut sugar. A very friendly employee checked and gave me exact directions where to find it as you walk into the store, which I texted to Linda. Sugar purchased, the rest was almost as easy to procure.

Neither Linda nor I had Tajin seasoning so Linda made do with some pepper seasoning she had. We didn’t really want the fruit to be super spicy anyway.

Linda waited until I’d arrived to mix the dip, correctly thinking I’d like pictures taken for a blog post. She had also saved the watermelon cutting for me. She dislikes cooking in general and the cutting and chopping of fruits and veggies in particular. No problem, I like it as long as I can find a decent knife (don’t ask).

While I used my extraordinary knife skills (ha) to make watermelon “fries” Linda mixed up two kinds of dips. In one she used coconut yogurt and the other she used lime yogurt.

Linda also mixed the seasoning to sprinkle on the watermelon later when we were ready to eat.

Watermelon IS my favorite fruit, no fancy measures needed. I do like it with salt but have stopped using that in deference to eating more healthy. But this recipe was truly excellent. Well worth the tinkering with seasonings and dips.

The touch of heat in the “fries”, the zesty lime dip and coconut dip all were surprisingly good. I’d have eaten a small mountain if we hadn’t been snacking on other good things all day. It was a memorable treat and I’d definitely do it again!

Oh and a p.s.: Target sells coconut sugar, my P.S. discovered on his last shopping trip. It’s also priced less. Just in case you’re heading out to buy some.

Adapted from Abbey’s Kitchen