This is Highly recommended, a column dedicated to what people in the food industry are obsessed with eating, drinking and buying right now.
One of the worst things you can get in email is a fine for an E-ZPass violation, $ 100 for each of the three missed $ 9 tolls that you will never successfully dispute. But luckily, under Newton’s Third Law, when a 10-pound box of tangerines shows up in mid-cold February, things will turn up again. One of the best things you can get in the mail.
Last Christmas when my family asked what I wanted, I replied: BIG BOX OF TANGERINES. I sent the link to OjaiPixies.com. You have to order them a few weeks / months in advance. So if you show up on a snowy winter’s day and just forget that you made that imperious request, what a pleasant surprise!
The mandarins – or oranges, grapefruits, lemons, a few avocados, you have a wide choice – come from Friends ranch in Ojai, California, 2,315 miles from me. Last year I ordered a mixed box that had different sorts of seeded, seedless, tiny and large mandarins, all sweet as candy and sweet as a button. Some are so small that they will fit in your puffer jacket pockets. Here you can keep them wonderfully. These seasonal California mandarins make the oranges I buy here in Michigan (for cocktails only) look like plastic props, bitter and dull in comparison.
And this year the demand for the pixies has only grown. In fact, you have to keep checking the Friend’s Ranch website to get reorders every Tuesday between 3pm and 4pm EST. I just grabbed the box of “The Plain Jane” this week and squeezed some avocados in it. Yes, there is now a hype about seasonal fruits. Set your calendar alarm. Do what you gotta do!
As a side note, some of the chic citrus fruits have big names like “Yosemite Gold” and “Gold Nuggets,” which remind me of greedy men sifting stones in dried river beds. If only they knew where the real wealth is! (In their hearts – and in mail order citrus cultivation.)
I will adapt myself this grapefruit pound cake with everything that comes up in my “Plain Jane” box.
Alex Lau
What to do with 10 pounds of citrus fruits ?! I juiced some shabby but super-cute dancy tangerines into a mason jar, then dropped into a halved jalapeño for later making margaritas. I’ve juiced a few more My favorite poppy seed pound cakewhich, thanks to all the juice, is more humid than damp. Citrus salads with fatty cheese or fatty avocado for the contrast. Upturned cakes. Quark bars! Candied bowls. Self-made Cleaner. jam! I passed them on to colleagues and friends. I peeled them and nibbled on them and then had that dreaded, wonderful orange scent on my hands all day. Unfortunately, if you think 10 pounds of citrus is too much for a single person, it is just a lack of imagination.
