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A seasonal treat
Dec. 21st, 2005 03:16 pmSomething a little more seasonal, since my last post could be considered a bit of a downer. Thanks to everyone who responded there; I will get to responses within a day or two.
What Christmas Means to Me
Though I like egg nog and shortbread, presents and decorated trees, lights and wreaths as much as the next person, to me, this is really a season about a fruit. This is the mandarin orange season.
I love mandarins with a passion usually associated with the lusty early days of a relationship. Towards the end of November every year, I start dreamily wondering when my dear loves will appear in the store.
I’m not picky enough to be able to differentiate between the Japanese and the Chinese mandarins. They only need to be seedless, and I will buy them by the box.
Last year I discovered organic satsuma mandarins. (Side: Isn’t “satsuma” a delicious word?) We get these at work, so I buy them at the wholesale price. I keep a 5 pound box on my desk at work, and I eat about a pound of mandarins on an average weekday for the three or four weeks they are in stock. And I take more mandarins home for Russ and I to eat in the evening and on the weekends.
The story goes that if you peel your orange all in one piece, you get a wish. I always wish that my mandarin will be tasty; I’m rarely let down.
I need to eat each little section of the orange separately. This is mandatory for maximum pleasure. It is a particularly funny thing to do when eating organic mandarins, because the sections are often very small. Organic produce is usually smaller then its conventional counterparts, and the sections of a tiny organic mandarin are sometimes smaller then my thumbnail. But I peel each one off the whole and pop the juicy morsel between my back teeth.
The problem with my section-by-section eating is that it often happens that the last section of a mandarin is the only icky section (damn Murphy anyway). It doesn’t happen quite often enough for me to swear off eating the last section of each mandarin. When it happens, I usually end up eating another whole mandarin to get the good taste back. That may explain why I eat a pound of mandarins a day.
The perfect mandarin is sweet and tart at once, with firm, plump, juicy sections. As with many things, outside appearances can be deceiving. Sometimes the ones that look pristine and perfectly orange-y are dry and tasteless inside. Sometimes a wrinkly or a green and blotchy orange can be the best one.
So you can keep your gingerbread and turkey and plum pudding – I want a mandarin!
Though I like egg nog and shortbread, presents and decorated trees, lights and wreaths as much as the next person, to me, this is really a season about a fruit. This is the mandarin orange season.
I love mandarins with a passion usually associated with the lusty early days of a relationship. Towards the end of November every year, I start dreamily wondering when my dear loves will appear in the store.
I’m not picky enough to be able to differentiate between the Japanese and the Chinese mandarins. They only need to be seedless, and I will buy them by the box.
Last year I discovered organic satsuma mandarins. (Side: Isn’t “satsuma” a delicious word?) We get these at work, so I buy them at the wholesale price. I keep a 5 pound box on my desk at work, and I eat about a pound of mandarins on an average weekday for the three or four weeks they are in stock. And I take more mandarins home for Russ and I to eat in the evening and on the weekends.
The story goes that if you peel your orange all in one piece, you get a wish. I always wish that my mandarin will be tasty; I’m rarely let down.
I need to eat each little section of the orange separately. This is mandatory for maximum pleasure. It is a particularly funny thing to do when eating organic mandarins, because the sections are often very small. Organic produce is usually smaller then its conventional counterparts, and the sections of a tiny organic mandarin are sometimes smaller then my thumbnail. But I peel each one off the whole and pop the juicy morsel between my back teeth.
The problem with my section-by-section eating is that it often happens that the last section of a mandarin is the only icky section (damn Murphy anyway). It doesn’t happen quite often enough for me to swear off eating the last section of each mandarin. When it happens, I usually end up eating another whole mandarin to get the good taste back. That may explain why I eat a pound of mandarins a day.
The perfect mandarin is sweet and tart at once, with firm, plump, juicy sections. As with many things, outside appearances can be deceiving. Sometimes the ones that look pristine and perfectly orange-y are dry and tasteless inside. Sometimes a wrinkly or a green and blotchy orange can be the best one.
So you can keep your gingerbread and turkey and plum pudding – I want a mandarin!
