Discover a wonderful surprise …

Cilantro. Brussel sprouts. Liver and onions. You either love them or hate them.

My “ew” food was grapefruit. It tasted bitter and was hard to get into. The peel came off easily enough, but the membrane encasing each segment was tough, difficult to chew, and left a weird sensation in my mouth. To avoid that, I attacked the translucent skin encasing each segment with my sharpest knife, like a surgeon wielding a scalpel, peeling the membrane away. Once I had uncovered naked pulp, I ate it, pretending it was an orange. Without the bitter membrane, it tasted pretty good. But the process took way too long and a level of absorption that rivaled Hannibal Lecter.

My brother- and sister-in-law are health-conscious vegetarians and eat grapefruit for breakfast. They own those fancy little shark-toothed spoons, a necessity if you plan to separate the pulp from the pith. But nothing puts a kink in your slinky faster than getting a squirt of acidic juice in your eye as you wrestle with your hemisphere of pungent bitterness. The level of sugar required to make that palatable effectively negates the healthy vibe. Between squinting for visual protection and the involuntary facial contortions resulting from activating the bitterness receptors on the back of my tongue, I feared I gave Mr. Bean a run for his money.

Then I stopped one summer at a roadside fruit stand on my way to South Padre Island and bought four large grapefruit. I had grand plans of being healthy while I was on the island. Replacing donuts with something distasteful for breakfast qualified.

I discovered something wonderful. Texas grows delicious grapefruit. The Rio Grande Valley, Texas’s cornucopia, produces globes of deliciousness with names like Rio Star or Ruby Red. El pomelo grown here are larger and pinker than the measly, bitter yellow ones from Florida. I fell in love with grapefruit that summer.

Life changed when I bought a cold-press juicer. I envisioned myself using it to concoct healthy drinks out of kale, spinach, and ethically sourced oak leaves that would cleanse my liver, restore my pre-menopause memory, or make my skin look youthful and fresh. Then I had an epiphany. Juice the grapefruit.

Friends, I’m here to tell you nothing tastes better than a glass of fresh-pressed grapefruit juice. One softball-sized fruit yields about eight ounces of bliss. I slice them into wedges vertically (not the direction you cut if you plan to acid-etch your eyeballs for breakfast), then carefully remove the pinkish-orange outer peel. I say carefully, because you don’t want to accidentally squeeze the segments and waste any of that precious, delicious elixir. Then, one at a time, drop the slices down the juicer’s chute and watch liquid the color of a sunrise come pouring out.

So, in the year of our Lord 2024, screw your courage to the sticking point and try something new. Boldly go where you’ve not gone before. Start each morning with a glass of freshly pressed grapefruit juice. You won’t be sorry.