A Bountiful Showing + How to Eat an Orange

February 2, 2010

Inked by april

It’s been six weeks. SIX WEEKS. Does it feel that long? At some point during the CSA drought, someone (can’t remember who) said to me something (can’t remember what exactly) about me being a “girl obsessed with her CSA box.” I’m experiencing mixed feelings here, folks. Is that what you think I am? A women driven to obsessively chronicle the contents of her local farm’s gifts on a semi-weekly basis? Or perhaps I am a person attempting to improve my photography skills while sharing the delicious possibilities in a box of fruit and veggies. Either way, neither estimation is entirely off and I’ll happily continue this tradition with photos and the occasional recipe. Win all around! (Really? Obsessed? Don’t make me sound like a Beyonce movie!)

lemons, navel oranges, mandarin oranges, stir fry mix, dill, green onions, carrots, butternut squash, salad turnips, arugula

I’ll abstain from recipe sharing this week. Most of these items can be best enjoyed with a good scrub and chop. I WILL show you how to enjoy an orange without drips and minimum sticky fingers. My family calls it eating an orange “Florida Orange Style.” Thinking about it now, that name doesn’t even make sense. But the method does.

Winter inevitably evokes in me my favorite parts of growing up in the sunshine state. Everyone knew you didn’t buy oranges from the orchards until after a cold snap. That makes the oranges sweeter. And once that cold snap hits, I knew my after school snacks would show up in the form of an unlikely orange juice box (Sorta.)

How to eat an orange Florida Orange Style

What you’ll need:

• 1 juicy orange, (I used navel from this week’s box)
• a sharp knife
• a sense of humor
• if without, a child
• if without a sense of humor or a child, someone else’s child

First give the orange a good scrub. You want clean skin.

Use the knife to cut around the stem. Angle your knife so that it cuts a cone and you have a little hat, removable from the fruit.

Carefully cut inside the orange without poking through the skin. You want to maximize juiciness.

You’ll want to enjoy it now so go ahead and grasp the orange with both hands, put it up to your face…

and SUCK! That’s right, I said SUCK. This is where the sense of humor comes in. Or the little kid. If you are too proud to suck on an orange, first of all you are missing out. Second of all, a little kid wins because that booger will get to enjoy a delicious treat. If I can do it, you can too. Just once. And if you figure the payoff isn’t worth sucking on an orange, fair enough.

Slurp, squeeze and suck until there is no juice left. At this point your lips are tingly from the acid in the peel. If you did it right, the orange skin has started to rip around the cut edges.

When you’re satisfied there is no more juice to be had, find the little rips around the hole and pull. Open that orange up, turn the skin inside out and chomp away.

When all is said and done, eating an orange Florida Orange Style leaves you with lightly sticky fingers, no drips and a full tummy. Ah, satisfaction.

How do you embarrassingly eat your favorite fruit or veggie?

Posted in Food and tagged CSA, eat, eatwell, embarrassing, Florida, fruit, howto, oranges, produce.