Today’s podcast from knitting designers, Arne & Carlos, was about Norway’s love of oranges. This brought up memories. My Bavarian mom was born in 1906. In her early years, an orange was a Christmas treat. When I was a NY child in the 1950’s, oranges from Florida were available mostly in winter, when they were at their best. That’s the only time she bought them. Normally, she halved them both longitudinally and latitudinally, then halved each quarter. You peeled back a corner so you could pull out the segment pieces with your teeth.
If I had a cold, she made an “orange lotus” for me as a treat. Score from navel down, stop just before stem end, peel carefully. To this day, that’s how I peel an orange, with a twinge of disappointment if I lose a petal.
Anybody else have a lifelong orange-prep habit? Or with other fresh fruit?
My parents would buy a giant box of navel perhaps every winter for the Lunar New Year, because gifting oranges is a common practice for Chinese New Year. We got almost as much as we gave away, so we would be eating a lot of oranges every Chinese New Year. Oranges are a common gift to bring to people, and it’s often eaten after meals. While I like oranges, I kind of got tired of them with how often we had them.
Funny how you describe cutting the oranges so that you can get the vote sized segments. That’s exactly how I cut oranges, and my mom used to disagree with me. She would cut them length wise, save it never made any sense to me. I prefer oranges peeled, and I think I’ve posted before that I have to remove as much of the pith as possible. I was essentially forbidden to peel oranges after dinner for the family because it would take about an hour for me to do one orange.
I’ve always liked really good oranges. These days I’ve become pretty much addicted to Cuties because they’re so easy to pell and have no seeds. Thumbnail through the stem area, peel down 5 or 6 skin sections, carefully remove the few strands of pith (), eat.
Long ago, my aunt would send us a big basket (a actual one) filled with oranges from Texas for Xmas. We’d always have to go down to the Railway Express office in the yards to pick them up, and then as a bonus we’d get to eat at the Smoke House cafe conveniently next door.
Remember it all like yesterday.
When I raised and showed pedigreed cats, I had a very sweet leftover Oriental Shorthair named Uno. He was a runt even though his primiparous mother only had the one kitten. She was so upset when he began walking that she carried him around to the point where he had a deep neck wound. I had to separate them and hand-raise him. Never robust, he stayed on, not being placeable in a pet home. His passion was citrus pith of any kind. I thought it odd years before, when I had a Siamese who guzzled the juice from canned asparagus, but pith? Bitter, chewy, stringy, ick. Takes all kinds!
Bouncing off Erica’s pith-eating cat, we seem to have (Meyer lemon) rind eating rats. We had a tree full of fruit ready to harvest, but an unseen co-resident deemed them at peak before we got to them. He/it/they peeled several dozen prime lemons, leaving the flesh hanging like out of season holiday ornaments.
Looking at the “open lotus” of Erica, it reminds me when I was young, my parents bought a plastic tool like this to peel the orange skin, one end is to slice open the orange peel without touching the flesh and the other curvy end is to slice open the “petals”, unlike you, my parents made 4-petal flowers.
They were given out at the Florida welcome centers for years…when you arrived by car, it was a traditional to stop at the state line for a glass of Florida orange juice and your free peeler!
Thanks, Alexandria. I think we have to face the face that we have a resident rat who lives somewhere in the complex of abutting fences and several neighbors’ garages .“Something” attacked our apple crop last fall. And enjoys strawberries in season. Poison and traps aren’t options because of neighborhood cats who occasionally wander through.
It’s part of San Franicsco living along with raccoons and the occasional skunk.
), eat.
