Cooking For Joy
It’s Worth Hauling a 10-Pound Bag of Grapefruit Back From Texas
A reminder of last week’s travel that seems like a lifetime ago
Editor’s Note: Heated has asked contributors to write about a dish they’re cooking that cuts through bleak headlines, forced isolation, and limited ingredients to bring them joy; we’ll be running at least one contribution a day through this stay-at-home stretch.
The lifetime ago that was last week, I was traveling in Texas. It was high grapefruit season in the state, and I wanted to bring some fruit back home to Philly. I grabbed a 10-pound bag of pale yellow-orange Texas boulders from an H-E-B outside downtown Austin, lugged them to the airport, and managed to condense the citrus and my backpack into a single giant canvas tote that was clearly above the personal item size guidelines. (I had a roller, too.) I carried the bag on the opposite side of the airline agent scanning boarding passes at the gate, having become that which I despise, a sneaky carry-on rule-breaker.
TLDR: The grapefruits made their way home, and since there are about 15 of them, I’ve been using them every day since: fresh sprinkled with sugar at breakfast, tossed with shaved cucumbers and fennel with dinner, candying the peel for the future. Last night I made…
