Divine Intervention

Okay, goshdarnit, I'm sure the blankety-blank reservoirs are filled to overflowing by now! When the fearmongers on the TV news in California haven't mentioned the threat of drought for three months, I know the old water table is doing just fine. So, it's time to turn off heaven's spigot, already! We surrender!

Whining over too much rain when the Middle East is exploding in revolution and the poor, stoic Japanese are staggering under a hideous one-two punch - not to mention other human and natural disasters happening around the world - seems downright childish.

Still, my spirits have been down a bit lately, what with all the news from afar and my own family concerns plus the unending rain, so I decided to reverse the trend by volunteering as a reading tutor at a local charter school, Richmond College Prep, and making an avocado salad. Small things, but I Iike to think they both make a difference.

And what a difference they made! If you've never been hugged by 15 four- and five-year olds in a delicious scrum of excited, wriggling little bodies, you haven't lived. And the shy smile on a child's face when you praise her improved reading is worth a million bucks. I am giving a little time; I am getting so much more.

Oh, right, this is a food blog! If you don't have time to volunteer for some heart-filling activity, try avocado salad instead. Get yourself a ripe avocado (Fuerte, if possible), slice it in half, take out the pit, fill the cup where the pit rested with supremes of pink grapefruit (which is just a fancypants way of saying grapefruit sections without the membranes that divide them) and squeeze the rest of the juice of the grapefruit over the whole thing. No dressing needed or, even, wanted.

The juice will keep the avocado from turning brown and the sweet-tart grapefruit is the perfect foil for the rich, unctuous avocado. You get a shot of Vitamin C for your whiny immune system and a pampering treat for your childish side, all in one sweet package. Eaten separately, they are delicious; eaten together, they ascend to divine. And we could all use some divine intervention right now, couldn't we?

Purloined Grapefruit

At the end of my street is a house with a grapefruit tree. All last year, I watched the ripe fruit drop and roll down our steep hill, bruised, neglected and unwanted, until it stopped who knows where. Apparently, the owners are not grapefruit lovers like me.

So, this week while I was chasing my AWOL Cora all over the neighborhood, I saw one of those lovely grapefruits in the gutter and I picked it up.

Thus begins my life of crime. I didn't knock to find out if they wanted it. I didn't ask any of the neighbors. I just took it home, cut it in half, sectioned it with my mother's sublime grapefruit knife and enjoyed every guilty bite. I didn't add anything - it was perfect as it came. It was tart and tangy and oh, so delicious, even with a bruise on its little round bottom.

Next time my dog takes it on the lam, I'm going to look for more illicit fruit. I might ask if those neighbors are out in the yard but otherwise I'll just liberate it. I've become a leathery, hardened grapefruit thief.