Citrus aren't my favorite fruits, but since I live in Florida and like to eat seasonally, citrus is about the only thing available right now. Well, that's not entirely true - Plant City strawberries are beginning to make their debut. Anyhow, there is a roadside stand, just a table and a tent, on the road to school. A year ago, I stopped and bought a bag of tangeloes. I brought them home and planned to eat them out of hand, but when I cut into one, they were so juicy they just begged me to make juice. And so I did. And proceeded to make the most fantastic juice I've ever tasted. Like, sublime. I'd never been satisfied with freshly-squeezed juice before, because it was always thin and weak and uninspiring. Suddenly, I knew why advertising copy waxes poetic about freshly-squeezed juice. The stuff had body and flavor for days.
Before Christmas this year, the stand offered up some grapefruit and some red navels. I gave the red navels a go, but they just didn't compare to those tangeloes. What delight, then, when I discovered the stand has tangeloes out! A couple weeks ago, I stopped for a bag of them (and a sack of grapefruit). The juice was just as wonderful as I remembered. In a very garde-manger moment, I used more of the fruit (than I otherwise would have) and made candied orange peels, even saving the syrup for cocktails later (orange mojitos, orange cosmopolitans, there might have been some orange in the margaritas). The peels taste just like the jelly orange slices sold next to gumdrops.
Yesterday, I came home with what will likely be the last tangeloes of the season. They're a bit more acidic than the last collection. Maybe a result of recent freezes and frosts and the pickers' desire to get them off the trees before our chilly temperatures this morning. They also had ponderosa lemons, so since all I had was a big bill for the honesty box, I took one of those with my tangeloes. Haven't decided what to do with it just yet. It feels like there's a lot of rind, which makes sense, given its citron heritage.
All I can say to this post in "mmm." Sounds really, really tasty. As a fellow midwesterner living in the warmth of the United States southern regions... I totally relish in your delight. We've recently made the same discover of adding limes and/or avocado to nearly every meal! Fresh/veggies in the middle of the winter is still a novelty that makes me laugh and think about those long walks to the bus stop in middle/high school.
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