Thursday, January 08, 2009

Oranges Everywhere

What's the deal with sending cases of fruit as a gift? A small bag of 6 or 7 is appreciated, but a whole case! We received a case of fresh Florida oranges a few weeks ago. This is on top of ANOTHER case that my husband bought from work. One of his co-workers children was selling them as part of his boy scout troop. So, two cases of orange. And, I bought a case of clementines. Tis the season! I didn't know about the 70 oranges that filled out kitchen when I made the purchase.

So for the past three weeks, our kitchen has had a bright orange tint to it. I feel like we're eating oranges all the time but they're still here! They're starting to haunt me. I'm not even a huge fan of fresh oranges. I never got into them when I was a child. I sucked down water at the soccer games while my teammates make faces and giggled with their orange peels lining their teeth. It always gave me the chills. I must have had a bitter orange along the way and it has scared me still to this day.

Orange juice? Eh....I don't love it either. I'm always a hot tea drinker with breakfast. Not even cranberry juice. That was always too surgery for me.

There is only one instance when I crave and need a tall glass of OJ. When I make my poor man's meal of Uncle Ben's white rice with butter and salt, I need a glass of Tropicana. It's very strange combination and has made friends gag at time. But it hit the spot for me. My poor man's meal is something that I've lived on for years. My mom always made white rice as part of our Shabbat dinners on Friday night and now I make it when I'm home alone or looking for something comforting, filling, buttery and salty.

Tonight is just me for dinner. While my husband is at band practice, I'm going to make a healthy meal for dinner. Seared salmon with a shaved fennel and orange salad. I'm hoping the fatty fish will help me stomach the orange segments from the salad. If not, I'll just cook up some white rice and enjoy my traditional meal.

4 comments:

foodbin said...

too much of anything is hard to stomach.

Unknown said...

I can so vividly recall you with a bowl of Uncle Ben's on many occasions...glad to see you still enjoy the simple stuff!

Anonymous said...

All those oranges! You could cut them up and marinate the slices in mulled wine, maybe layer over some ice cream. Squeeze oranges, lemons and limes together to make homemade sweet & sour mix for lovely adult beverages! Maybe start a white wine orange sangria? Or, our favorite, make an orange almond cake!!!! Actually, while we're at it, we'll take some of your extra oranges if you really don't want them. :)

gastroanthropologist said...

Orange curd? Marmalade? Orange Creamsicles? Candied Orange Peel?

When I worked as a pastry chef we had a farm that supplied us with meyer lemons which was great -except we got the entire harvest at once!

So, we made a meyer lemon "opera" cake. Layers of lemon cake, lemon syrup, lemon buttercream, and lemon white chocolate ganache.

And, meyer lemon souffle cakes. AND, we sliced them super thin on a slicer (which entails de-seeding them as well) to make meyer lemon jam.

I know how you feel about the oranges...just seeing a meyer lemon makes my skin itch now. Sometimes there can be too much of a good thing. It's probably worse if you never really liked the oranges anyway.