When I am in Paris, I try to eat as much fruit and veg as possible. Maybe it is the gray of the city or the fact that everyone seems to have a cold, but I feel the need to have my daily intake of Vitamin C. Luckily the Rue D'Aligre Market is just a few blocks from here, so I can refill the fruit bowl daily with French delicacies as well as North African ones. The market is famous for being a perfect mixture of French tradition with strong influences from Maghreb.
Yesterday I bought lots of grapefruits, and as I started eating my first half I had a Marcel Proust moment. I realized that the first time I had grapefruit like that (cut in half, with some sugar sprinkled on the juice and the pulp scooped up with a spoon) when I was in Minnesota. My American Mom introduced me to this lovely dessert 15 years ago. Crazy! This reminded me of all sorts of thing, including all the other discoveries I made during that one year in America ( I could have green hair, see snow in May, learn another language perfectly, feel at home in another country, etc )
These days we hear so much about the U.S. and it makes me realize how determinant the time between '93 and '94 was for me . It changed my life for ever (and made me love grapefruit!)
