Sensorial Memories: Taste at the breakfast table

I generally eat a grapefruit every morning. Each morning the grapefruit tastes very different. Yesterday it was disastrously sweet, like I had splurged on candy for breakfast. Today it was pleasantly sour and bitter with hints of sweetness. Other days it can be downright sour and I am obliged to make a face that leaves my husband wondering what I see in this strange morning ritual. 

This round piece of fruit does stand out in our household. We mostly choose to eat local and seasonal foods and at our latitude and present snow drifts there is no pretending this is anything but local. 

We do have regular staples that come from far away such as coconut oil and olive oil. We choose these exotic oils because we feel that they have a substantial health benefits. 

But I choose to eat grapefruit for entirely different reasons. 

I eat grapefruit for the memories. 

I am the first generation of my maternal family to live outside of the Lone Star State in several hundred years. My mother died when I was eight and some of the dim memories I still have of her include her eating strange fruits like grapefruit (and kumquats). Of her showing me how to cut apart each section of grapefruit so that I could easily spoon out the fruit, squeezing each half to smithereens to get the last drops of juice. 


Later in life many summers were spent at my Papa’s house in northeast Texas where, full of Texan pride, he would lecture me on the unparalleled qualities of the ruby red. As sweet as they were he still felt they needed an added kick. He sprinkled sugar on them until diabetes set in and he switched to aspartame.


Luckily I don't feel obliged to follow all the family traditions! 

I spend a lot of time tasting herbs and foods, feeling and philosophizing about their therapeutic qualities. But this morning was a reminder that my sense of taste serves me in so many ways, one of which is the bittersweet memories of my family who have gone before me.