i love ruby red grapefruit. look at it! the colour, amazing. the taste, pretty good — just astringent enough that no one else wants to share. but the one i got at woolies the other day was a revelation. it was full of flavour, yet mild, with a soft sweetness. it was wet and juicy. the kid, with whom grapefruit has disagreed in the past, took a most tentative suck, her lips already puckered up in anticipation. and then… she wanted more.

back in my childhood, my mum sometimes brought grapefruit back from the supermarket. it was exotic then, in the tropics, the regular, dour, yellow grapefruit. and we would only eat it if it were sprinkled, heavily, in brown sugar. i thought i’d carry on the tradition, just for kicks.

aside from the 21 bars of chocolate i brought back from europe over the summer (you’d be surprised at how long it takes to consume them at a steady though not compulsive pace; i think i have just begun my fifth bar), i also made space in my suitcase for a handsome canister of sugar. not just any old sugar, mind. this one i found in la grande epicerie de paris, in an aisle of fancy sugars. i spent too long gawking, almost fell into a sugar-coma just by being in close proximity. and then, i guess because it was xmas time, i chose the saveur de no’91l, from terre exotique.

here’s the guff, run through babelfish:

this sugar especially was concocté and lovingly prepared for the happiness of all. c’ is while thinking of the crackling d’a chimney, with its soft heat and by evoking the sugar refineries enjoyed at that time l’year that we imagined this “sweeten of noël”. it combines the softness of cane sugar and the savours traditionally used in the receipt of the bread d’spices.”

the savours include cinnamon, green anise, ginger, cardamom, and girole… which seems to translate as a kind of mushroom? wha? it smells particularly anisey, but the flavours of everything could be much stronger. it’s only 5% spices after all, mixed into €6.5 of raw cane sugar. no match, in this case, for the magnificent grapefruit.