Know Your Oranges

While many of my food-focused friends have this Breville contraption so they can make themselves a glass of beet ginger juice in the morning, I was gifted the aluminum thing from the '50's that looks like a torture device. A family friend loved them so much that he bought one for me. I've grown to love it, especially down here in Florida.

"You've missed the red navels," said a guy shopping for his wife at Bob

Roth's Groves yesterday afternoon. "These just aren't as good." We were

sampling navels, and honestly, he spoke like one who'd been spoiled by

what we've got. I was looking for Temples, anyway. I knew they had just

become available. There was one bag left for me. 

Navels are what we're most familiar with, though the season ends in late

January. Named for a resemblance to its namesake, it's easy to peel

yet not as juicy as other oranges, while the red navel that's sold through December has a deeper hue and notes of berry.

Honeybells are still around for a

couple of weeks -- a tangerine and grapefruit cross -- and Temples make an appearance now through February. Temples, wrote Patrick

Ferrell in the New York Times, "is a cartoonist's idea of an orange," squishy and spongy and misshapen. Supersweet Ortaniques debut in March and April.

What strikes me as odd while eating around  five nights of the

week is that oranges don't show on menus as much as they

do up north. I've seen them used only at Tryst so far. Where are they in salads or cocktails? Why not paired with

sardines or oily fish? Can you help me find oranges on a menu? In the

meantime, I'll use them for juice.