In November, Dr. Stephanie Wheeler, the attending physician for our medicine team at the VA Hospital, brought us a bag full of these small, somewhat shriveled oranges that still possessed their stems and leaves. Hmmm…I inquired as to where she obtained these strange things, and she informed me that they came from the Whole Foods Market. No one touched them the entire night on call. Now, I love oranges, but I hate eating them while working because: A) sticky fingers from peeling them, B) no good place to spit the seeds, and C) I have to peel all of that white stuff off of them to keep them from tasting too stringy.
Anyway, I finally broke down and decided to peel one the following morning. I peeled it in, I’m not kidding, less than ten seconds. Just grab part of the skin, and the whole thing practically peels itself. Inside was the juiciest (but none of the juice got on my fingers), most delicious seedless orange I have ever tasted, and it had minimal white stuff on its exterior. Wow – so all three of the annoying aspects to oranges had been eliminated. I had just consumed the perfect orange.
At this point, in typical Jodi-fashion, it was time to do some research on this most curious fruit. It is a type of mandarin orange, similar to a Clementine, but not quite as sweet, called a Satsuma. They are available during the late fall/winter months here and are grown in California’s San Joaquin Valley. Apparently, there is also a research project at Auburn University in Alabama, and of course some are grown in Florida, but I don’t recall having ever seen them at the grocery stores in South Carolina.
In brief, I am delighted to have found such a perfect fruit that can keep me happy until strawberries are back in season.
