Discriminating Taste

Cold this morning, and as the day goes on the promise is for even colder weather - down to near zero degrees tonight.

A belated Christmas present arrived this week - a half bushel of grapefruit from Vero Beach FL.

Few things are better this time of year than a morning grapefruit. Sharp and tart, but sweet at the same time. It's just a perfect way to start a morning. I received a note at Christmas that the grapefruit would arrive sometime in mid to late January when they were fully tree ripe. The fruit shipped for Christmas delivery is still good, but the peak of the season is now and it certainly showed with the three that have been eaten so far.

Miss Ellie as always was in the kitchen to help. She is a big fan of grapefruit and waits, sometimes impatiently, for any handouts that might come her way. Her brother finds them distasteful, but she's more than willing to eat what he spits out. She was happy this morning.

As much as she likes grapefruit she has a long way to go to come up to the standards on connoisseurship that her great, great uncle Dangerous Dan displayed. The annual gift of grapefruit is into its third decade so it isn't a new thing. In the early 90's it became an annual ritual to buy several supermarket grapefruit during Christmas to get ready for the real thing in January. Dan thought grapefruit were absolutely great, but try giving him a piece of the supermarket variety and he spit it out. Give him a section of the good stuff and he literally turned circles and was your friend for life.

It took a small experiment one winter to prove this point. While Dan was outside making sure no birds were in his yard I cut up one Vero Beach grapefruit and one store purchased grapefruit. I put each in a separate dog dishes and placed them on the floor. He came rushing in the door and stopped quickly when he saw two bowls on the floor. The nose went in the first bowl, then the second, and then he promptly ate every piece of the Vero fruit while leaving the store variety untouched. It's nice to know he was so well trained.

While we're not into "selling" on this blog, a visit to the orchard may be in order.

And now that it's daylight and the local world is getting busy it's time to head to the market. It's a perfect day to braise something.