Mention frozen grapes in any Weight Watchers meeting and listen to the sighs of remembered pleasure. In my meeting a few weeks ago, one member claimed she found them as satisfying—and addictive—as ice cream. Now, I’ve been hearing about the wonders of the frozen grape for close to a decade. They’re no secret. But the level of enthusiasm surpasses anything else I can think of. It’s as if, simply by sticking a tray of grapes into the deep-freeze, the weight will fly off. Actually, no, that’s not what these women are saying. They’re saying that eating these sweet little orbs is nearly akin to sex. Great sex. The gratification they describe has nothing to do with weight loss.
But truth be told, there is an advantage to freezing your grapes, beyond enhancing the flavor: Frozen grapes take longer to eat, so in all likelihood you’ll eat fewer.
In all these years it’s never occurred to me to actually try frozen grapes. They sounded pleasant enough, but I was either too lazy or too skeptical to bother. Come on, could they really be as good as sex? As good as ice cream? But yesterday I bought some nice-enough red grapes and decided to give it a try. I plucked them off their stems, rinsed them and dried them thoroughly, then spread them in a single layer on a cookie sheet lined with paper towels. Stuck them in the freezer. And promptly forgot about them, until this morning.
Oh. My. These are quite something, aren’t they? Their lush little insides do attain a nearly creamy consistency when frozen. And the sweetness is magnified—I tasted a non-frozen grape for comparison, and the frosty one was markedly closer to candy. Who knew? OK, apparently everyone else at Weight Watchers knew. It just took me a while to come around.