Sweet-Tart Memory

When Seth and I moved in together, I worked days and he worked the swing shift. That left breakfast as our only option for a meal together. Eight years later, we still sit down for breakfast together every day, something that we've grown to cherish.

In those early days, Seth wasn't into fruit, but I began making a fruit salad daily that consisted of sliced bananas, apples, pears, berries or whatever else we had on hand. I'd toss in a handful of nuts, a pinch of cinnamon and a drizzle of honey if the fruit wasn't sweet enough. Fruit is now an everyday routine. Today we usually just slice a pear or apple and have that with our morning meal. Every once in a while I buy grapefruit, and even though we're not exactly in the thick of grapefruit season, I rationalize it by knowing there is no grapefruit season period in the Northwest.

I like mine simple: halved and sprinkled with sugar. Of course I run knife around the edge, so the fruit segments will give with just a little help from a grapefruit spoon. My favorite part is the end when I get to squeeze the remaining juice into the spoon and gulp it down.


As a kid, I thought grapefruits were just something old people ate. My grandparents Mom and Pop had them regularly for breakfast, just the way I described with a sprinkle of sugar. We seldom ate them at my house growing up, and I'm not really sure what turned me on to them as an adult, but I love them. A ripe grapefruit with its sweet-tart taste is hard to beat. The best part, though, is that with one bite, I taste the memory of sitting at the bar in Mom's kitchen eating a microwave-cooked egg that my grandfather probably told me came from an elephant.

Grapefruits aren't just for old people, but I doubt I would have recognized how sweet they could be until I got a little old myself.