Cantaloupe Ice Pops

The Altima's AC went out on Tuesday. Of course it did. Of course the air conditioning in my car — the car with the dent in the rear bumper that I swear I'll fix "one of these days," the same "one of these days" that has been going on for three years — of course the AC decides to quit during the last week of June in Nashville, Tennessee, where the air is not air but soup. Hot soup. The kind of soup you don't want. The opposite of every soup I have ever made or endorsed.

I drove to work on Wednesday with all four windows down and arrived at the dental practice looking like I'd been in a fight with a hair dryer and lost. Dr. Pham said, "Rough morning?" and I said, "My car is trying to kill me slowly," and he laughed and then he said, "There's a guy in Donelson who does AC work, reasonable prices," and wrote down a number on a Post-it note. I will call the number. I will call it after I figure out if $280 for a car AC recharge is something the budget can absorb or if the budget will look at $280 and laugh in my face. The budget has been known to laugh.

The heat changed everything this week. The kids, who were already feral from summer break, became heat-feral, which is worse. Jayden lay on the kitchen floor on Tuesday afternoon and said, "I'm melting," with the dramatic commitment of a boy who has never experienced actual hardship but has seen a lot of movies. Elijah stripped down to his underwear and stood in front of the box fan with his arms out like a tiny orange-loving Jesus. Chloe retreated to her room — the room she shares with the concept of privacy, which in a two-bedroom apartment is more theoretical than actual — and refused to emerge until the sun went down.

Lorraine called on Thursday and said, "Bring those babies over here, I've got the window units on." Lorraine's apartment has window AC units that sound like jet engines and cool approximately 60% of the space, but 60% is better than the 0% my Altima was offering, so I dropped the kids off and went to work and spent eight hours in the blessed, frigid, over-air-conditioned dental office and thought: I will never complain about this office being too cold again. I have been complaining about this office being too cold for eight years. I take it all back. Cold is a gift. Cold is grace.

I did not cook a hot dinner once this week. Not once. I am not apologizing for this. When it is 95 degrees at 7 PM and your apartment doesn't have central air and your oven is basically a second furnace, you do not turn on the oven. You don't. This is survival. This is wisdom. This is a woman who knows her limits and her limits are: the ambient temperature of a preheated kitchen in a Nashville summer.

Instead we ate cold. Monday: turkey and cheese roll-ups with baby carrots and ranch. Tuesday: pasta salad — rotini, Italian dressing from a bottle, cherry tomatoes, diced cucumber, cubed cheddar, some of that salami from the deli that Jayden loves. I made a huge bowl and it lasted three days. Wednesday: sandwiches. Thursday at Lorraine's: she made chicken salad with grapes and pecans, which is her summer move, her signature, the dish that makes me ten years old again sitting at her kitchen table with my feet not reaching the floor. Friday: I bought a rotisserie chicken from Kroger for $6.99 and we ate it cold with potato chips and sliced tomatoes from Lorraine's neighbor's garden. It was, honestly, one of the best meals of the week. Sometimes the best meal is the one that requires zero effort and a $6.99 chicken.

Saturday evening the heat broke — not completely, but enough. A thunderstorm rolled through around five, the kind that Nashville does in summer where the sky turns green and then purple and then opens up, and for twenty minutes it was loud and dramatic and then it was over and the air was ten degrees cooler and smelled like wet asphalt and relief. We sat on the apartment stoop — all four of us, Elijah in my lap because thunder still scares him even though he'll deny it — and watched the steam come off the parking lot. Chloe said, "It smells like the world just took a shower." She's right. It did.

I made cornbread after the storm. Not because anyone asked for it, not because it made sense with the leftover rotisserie chicken (it did), but because the kitchen was finally cool enough to turn on the oven, and sometimes when the world takes a shower and the air smells clean and your six-year-old is in your lap pretending he's not scared, you make cornbread. Earline's recipe. No sugar. Cast iron skillet. The skillet that's been seasoned by three generations of Mitchell women who knew that the best thing you can do after a storm is feed people something warm. Jayden ate four pieces. Even Elijah ate a piece, though he picked it apart first to confirm it was an acceptable shade of yellow-adjacent-to-orange. I'll count it.

After a week of doing everything possible to keep the oven off and the kids from fully melting into the kitchen floor, I keep thinking about what I wish I’d had stashed in the freezer all along — something cold and sweet that required exactly zero heat to make. These cantaloupe ice pops are it. Three ingredients, a blender, and a few hours of patience, and you’ve got the kind of thing Elijah would have approved of on sight (the color alone clears his standards), Jayden would have eaten four of, and honestly, after that Saturday storm finally broke and the air smelled clean again, would have tasted like relief on a stick. Make a batch ahead — you’ll want them waiting.

Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 0 minutes | Total Time: 4 hours 10 minutes (includes freeze time) | Servings: 8 pops

Ingredients

4 cups fresh cantaloupe, cubed (about 1/2 large ripe cantaloupe)
2 tablespoons fresh lime juice (about 1 lime)
1 tablespoon honey, plus more to taste
Pinch of fine salt

Instructions

Prep the cantaloupe. Slice the cantaloupe in half, scoop out the seeds, and cut the flesh away from the rind. Cube into rough chunks — no need to be precise, they’re going in the blender.
Blend until smooth. Add the cantaloupe, lime juice, honey, and salt to a blender. Blend on high for 30–60 seconds until completely smooth and no chunks remain.
Taste and adjust. Taste the puree. If your cantaloupe is very ripe and sweet, you may not need more honey. Add another teaspoon if you’d like it a little sweeter. A touch more lime brightens it if needed.
Fill the molds. Pour the blended mixture into ice pop molds, filling each about 3/4 full to allow for expansion. Tap the molds gently on the counter to release any air bubbles.
Insert sticks and freeze. Place the lids on the molds and insert the sticks. Freeze for at least 4 hours, or overnight for best results. The pops are done when completely solid all the way through.
Unmold and serve. To release the pops, run warm water over the outside of the mold for 10–15 seconds. Pull gently and they should slide right out. Serve immediately or wrap individually in wax paper and store in the freezer for up to two weeks.

Nutrition (per serving)

Cantaloupe Ice Pops — The No-Cook Summer Treat We Needed All Week