Monday, January 09, 2006

Oh my darling Clementine!

Joy of joys! It's clementine season.



These little spheres of orangey goodness bring delight to my tastebuds. (I originally wrote "tangeriney goodness" instead of "orangey goodness). Then I did some research on clementines and found that they are the smallest of the mandarin oranges.)

They are perfect is so many ways:

Clementines are always juicy and never pithy — unlike their sister, the plain ol' orange, who can be terribly pithy, dry, sour and downright unpleasant.



Clementines are easy to peel. There is something about their nature that makes these little gems easy to peel quickly.

With plain ol' oranges you can spend a good portion of three minutes peeling, only to find them inedible.

There's nothing worse than spending an entire trio of minutes engaged in the citrusy task of ridding a Sunkist special of its rind only to find yourself with fingernails full of peel and pulp and still nothing to eat. (OK, maybe there are a couple of things worse than peeling an inedible orange — like dying in a bar fight or being a crab fisherman — but still!)




And, of course, if you're a fledgling anal retent, like myself, you can carefully score the blessed clementine with an orange-peeling tool around its diameter. Then, oh so carefully, removed the peel into two perfect semi-circles.

You can save said perfect hemispheres of clementine husks and arrange them into decorative patterns.

Or you could pretend like you don't ... because really saving clementine peels might be akin to a serial killer collecting souvenirs from his victims.

4 comments:

Tanuki said...

Yum. There are all kinds of mini orangey things in stores now. I have a bag of mini tangerines that are superb. 'Member when mandarins only came canned and were in fruit cocktail? I loved them even then.

The peels you can save and make yourself a suit like the serial killer Wild Bill in Silence of the Lambs. Quelle Rockstar!

Tanuki said...

...although the bright orange would be hard to match for shoes.

Rivetergirl said...

It might be hard to match shoes but I hear that some ultra-cool fashion chick owns her very own pair of orange sunglasses ...

Tanuki said...

Special K has some mad rawksupastah sunglasses for you too. Mad.