Blustery Weather – Crab, Grapefruit, and Avocado Salad

February 8, 2024 /

California was recently walloped by some fierce weather, especially down south. Our neighborhood got some rain, and some gale force winds. The winds knocked down some trees in our neighborhood, which always makes me sad for a life cut short. In better news, the wind also knocked a bunch of grapefruit down from a tree on one of my morning walks, and I grabbed as many firm ones as I could carry (3). I still had some leftover crab in the fridge, but not enough to make crab cakes*, so I decided to make a first course for our dinner instead. The result was a delicious and refreshing dish, above, made with grapefruit, crab, and avocado. It would have been prettier with pink grapefruit, but I didn’t come across any of those on my walk.

* Looking at the picture above, I clearly could have made crab cakes. Perhaps not enough for dinner, but enough for a first course. That’s OK, I really liked this dish.

Before we get to the recipe, here are some pictures of poor dead trees on my walk Monday morning.

And here is the tree with all of the grapefruit. Some of them were kind of mushy when I picked them up. I don’t know if that was from falling, or if they were overripe. I picked 3 good ones and brought them home.

In case you’re the type that needs a recipe, here you go.

Crab, Grapefruit, and Avocado Salad

Ingredients

  • Leftover crab – enough for 3 people, preferably given to you from some dear friends
  • 3 Grapefruits, preferably fallen from a neighborhood tree
  • 1 Avocado, preferably from your own tree, but likely not (I have an avocado tree that I grew from a seed, but it does not bear fruit. I had to buy my avocado at the grocery store.)
  • Extra Virgin olive oil, salt, and pepper. If you have any fancy olive oil, this is a good time for it, the flavor will come through.

Directions
Peel and segment your grapefruit, keeping the membrane from the middle. Squeeze out the juice and discard the membrane, and make a simple dressing with juice, olive oil, salt and pepper. The ratio should be about 2:1 oil to juice, but I just eyeballed it. Slice the avocado (this is one way. I tend to remove the seed, scoop the flesh out with a spoon, and slice on my cutting board.) Arrange grapefruit segments around the perimeter of your very dated salad plates, circa 1993, then add the avocado. Drizzle about 3/4 of the dressing on the fruit. Heap the center of the circle with crab meat, then drizzle with remaining dressing. Add more black pepper if desired.

32 Comments

  • Elisabeth

    February 8, 2024 at 5:38 am

    This looks delicious and I had to chuckle at your recipe directions. I WISH I could get grapefruit from a neighbour’s tree. Sigh. Unfortunately, there are 3 feet of snow outside and nary a fruit tree to be found 🙁

    • J

      February 8, 2024 at 5:13 pm

      I love the citrus trees around here, it’s one of the benefits of living where I do. Traffic, high prices, and drought are the down sides.

    • J

      February 8, 2024 at 5:14 pm

      Thanks Birchie! Storm is gone now, most of the mess is cleaned up. No more grapefruits on the ground even the day after, so I’m glad I got there when I could.

    • J

      February 8, 2024 at 8:08 pm

      Thanks Nicole! This is the first time I’ve ever gotten grapefruit this way. I think it was so heavy, that it fell from the tree. I didn’t see any lemons or oranges knocked down on my walk.

  • NGS

    February 8, 2024 at 11:47 am

    Why isn’t my Feedly working?! Your blog isn’t showing up in my feed so I have to manually come over here every day like I’m living in 2007 before I discovered how RSS feeds work. *sigh*

    I do not care for grapefruit. It is the worst of the citrus fruits. But until this very day, I think I thought grapefruit grew on small shrubs, not big trees. It’s big!

    • J

      February 8, 2024 at 8:11 pm

      Engie, I still live in 2007…I get emails for some blogs, but otherwise, I just pop by and see if people have posted. Why do I live my life this way? I have no idea.

      Grapefruit is very tart. I just love how bright and fresh it is, though. But I don’t eat it often. I love it with avocados though.

  • Lisa's Yarns

    February 8, 2024 at 12:50 pm

    Those poor trees! And the poor grapefruit! I am glad you were able to salvage some of them. That salad looks beautiful and I love your dishes! They are so bright and vibrant!

    • J

      February 8, 2024 at 8:12 pm

      Thanks Lisa! Those were our ‘everyday dishes’ that we received as a wedding gift, 30 years ago. They look very dated to me, I think it would be nice to have stark white.

      I do feel badly for the poor trees. A lot were lost last year too.

  • Ally Bean

    February 8, 2024 at 3:54 pm

    I love grapefruit but rarely find any that are fresh, hence this recipe that sounds delicious might not work for me. I’ve wondered about you were doing with all the rain. Thanks for updating.

    • J

      February 8, 2024 at 8:17 pm

      Do they not sell them in the produce department? Or are they just dried out and yucky?

      I think the freshness of the crab, caught on Sunday, cooked on Sunday, leftovers on Monday. Add that to the grapefruit, fresh from the tree Sunday night or early Monday morning. It was a winner of a dish for sure.

  • Ernie

    February 9, 2024 at 5:53 am

    We are twins in the feedly department – I also live in 2007. I have a feed on my blog, but I haven’t updated it in awhile and I must go check in on blogs to see if they have a new post. I’m glad I’m not alone and I’m now realizing that I could simplify my life by updating my blog feed.

    Grapefruit raining – wow. That was a lot of grapefruit. I once ate a grapefruit every day. This was before I was diagnosed with celiac and I decided that if I ate a gp daily, I felt better. I also enjoyed the recipe. If only people were just handing out crabs. Ha.

    A tornado ripped through out neighborhood in June of 2019 – ? The neighborhood lost so many trees. It looked like we lived in a jungle – the trees were tossed all over the place and people couldn’t even drive anywhere. It was so sad, but forutnately no one was hurt. Luckily, because the Shenanigan’s ignored the tornado warnings and slept upstairs instead of spending the night in the basement like all of our sensible neighbors. In my defense, I’d gotten my allergy short that day and I heard nothing.

    • J

      February 9, 2024 at 7:33 am

      I’m so glad to hear that I’m not the only one just hopping by and seeing if people have posted! Now that you mention it, I think I have something set up where I can see some people’s blogs via wordpress, but I haven’t set it up completely and I just like my old fashioned way better.

      I wonder if a grapefruit (or any citrus) every day would be good for your tooth enamel? Or your stomach? So much (delicious) acid. We got really lucky, these crabs WERE free. And so fresh!

      A tornado! ACK! I’ve lived through earthquakes, but never tornados nor hurricanes, nor floods. Scary stuff.

  • Jenny

    February 9, 2024 at 6:33 am

    Wow, that looks like quite a storm! There are grapefruit trees in Florida, but I don’t know of any nearby. Co-workers often bring me mangos and avocados from their trees though! We have a papaya tree in our yard but it’s still pretty young. Hopefully it will give us fruit at some point!

    • J

      February 9, 2024 at 7:35 am

      Do you have a lot of oranges and lemons nearby? I see a lot of those, not so many grapefruit. As a matter of fact, I’ve never noticed the grapefruit tree above until this week when they were all on the ground. I wish someone would bring me avocados! Though I have had neighbors bring me pomegranates, so I shouldn’t complain.

    • J

      February 10, 2024 at 8:43 am

      I dream of my avocado tree bearing fruit, but a gardner friend once told me that store bought avocados do not grow fruit growing trees, I don’t remember why. I keep hoping, though!

  • San

    February 10, 2024 at 3:22 pm

    Looks like a bunch of trees/branches came down during the storm where you are… I saw the same on my run the other day. Lots of big branches. But hey, at least you could snatch up some grapefruits 🙂

  • Melissa

    February 13, 2024 at 8:45 pm

    We had a big storm here yesterday. There was heaps of damage and large hail storms but for some reason, our little pocket of Melbourne escaped major damage and no hail which was good.

  • Anne

    February 19, 2024 at 1:38 pm

    Citrus and crab is a fabulous combo. Add avocado? Out of this world.
    So sorry about all of the trees – it’s awful when they are taken down before their time. 🙁 Glad you all were safe and sound.