The gentleman taking inventory in the produce section at
Nica's gave me a stern look when he saw me pick up a bag of garden variety table grapes after work today. Silently, he handed me two small green globes tinged with pink, plucked like fragile treasure from a fold of protective white paper. "Muscats," he told me as I popped them in my mouth. Biting through the somewhat toothy skin, a flowery gush of sweet, winey pulp ran over my tongue. At some point, I must have opened my eyes again, because I remember thanking him as I rushed to the checkout with my tender bunch.
The
white muscat grape is to supermarket grapes what
Big Mama Thornton is to
Elvis; these, my friends, are what grapes are. I ate half of my bunch for dinner along with a healthy wedge of
boucheron, a handfull of EOTW whole wheat triscuit impostors, and two eggs scrambled with a heavy dollop of cream and a generous sprinkling of dried tarragon and then just barely cooked. Heaven.
