Life With….

On Wednesday, at about 9 am, I loaded the car with my luggage, the pets’ luggage, the pets, and Christmas presents, including two hundred pounds of  compact dumbbells that filled the passenger floor area of the car that I was transporting to Durham.  I was doing this so that one brother could pick them up, and take them to DC  and split the two sets with the other in order to save on shipping.  It was a gorgeous day to drive, the kind that makes you want to stay in Florida rather then return to the winter, which I hate especially when facing 20s with below teens in wind chill the next 7 – 14 days.  In my opinion, this is not the way to start anything let a lone a new year.  I personally believe that the weather alone will pull me further south someday, but that is another story for another day.

About 70 miles north of my mother’s house (with about 260 left in the state), I pulled over for gas in Fort Pierce.  Unwittingly, I had stumbled upon the Tropicana Juice Processing Plant and the gas station I chose backed up on to it. I don’t really know how to describe how sad this plant made me.  It is a shiny and new building from the highway, and its lot is loaded with hundreds, perhaps thousands of truck trailers filled with beautiful, fresh Florida oranges.  On this particular day, it seemed mostly deserted, except for a few young African-American men, who were sorting trailers and loading conveyors.

Part of what saddened me was the emptiness, and desolation of the men – they seemed to be working at a plant which appeared to exist in the middle of nowhere.  I know they were not far from cities and towns, but in all directions, I perceived nothing but the plant and the BP station.

More so though was the waste – I could not and cannot shake the image of rotten oranges either being simply discarded, because they were not removed form the trailers fast enough, or somehow making it into a juice for people to eat – and think that that is a good tasting orange juice.

(People will apparently tape anything – but here is one of many tapes of the Tropicana Juice Train after leaving the main plant in Bradenton through Plant City, Florida.)  

I will freely admit I am, and always have been an orange juice snob.  I never remember liking minute maid or the orange juices served in planes or school lunches that come in those little plastic cups with metal tops – they tasted both sickly and processed to me.   For awhile, I would drink Tropicana and other massed produced juices, particularly with real pulp, but this changed once my mother got a juicer.

I first became addicted, there really is no other word to describe both my craving for these juices and the rate at which I can go through them, to fresh orange juice as a young child visiting my grandparents in Tampa (Belair), Florida.  My grandmother, who I do no have many memories of that are pleasant, always had some for us, and it was always a high point to drink it, with pulp and all.  It was usually either juice she juiced herself or bought at a road side stand.  Once my mother got a juicer,  there were a few years where  as long as oranges were in season she would by bushels of Valencia Oranges for us to juice.  I have never gone back to processed juices – all of my juices now are either fresh squeezed by me or a grower.  In the worst case I will buy a non-pasteurized high pulp brand – but even then usually only in the off season and rarely,  say when I am sick which always makes me crave juice.

Oranges are one of the few foods, along with berries, that I have never questioned the seasonality of.  Others I became aware of as I cooked and thought more about food – but berries, along with watermelon, are exclusively for the summers, and oranges are the best winter fruit around for my  money.  They taste great alone, preserve well, and make a juice to die for, besides they are full of vitamin C which fights a winter cold.  The smell of oranges reminds me of the Christmas season and winter, and this association is long standing.  Every year of my life, except this one, we have each had a fresh Florida orange in our stocking (along with a walnut) and the smell of a fresh orange, or most other real citrus, seems out of place during the warmer, lighter seasons.

My love of oranges and juice only intensified when we moved to South Florida.  Then my mother would trek from Boca Raton up to Bloods Hammock’s Groves, which was recently bought by Harry and David and no longer has a family run grove store, and buy fresh orange juice by the gallon, along with pints of fresh grapefruit juice for my father and I.  She would buy us fresh honeybells, the best orange/tangerine ever as it is like a honey kissed juice in the body of an orange,  in January and rich juicing oranges or tangerines other times during the season.  There were fresh grapefruits as a nondairy  breakfast alternative so large you could only eat half, but somehow sweet and acidic at the same time.  And of course, the preserved navel and honeybell marmalades, which are to this day my favorite thing to spread onto toast.

When I went to college, twice a year I would get a bushel of oranges in the mail, in January it was honeybells, and a juicing orange pack later in February.  In the pre-9/11 days, I even brought back a gallon of the juice on the plane after Christmas break one year.

Honeybells - from the Bloods website product page

Since Bloods has closed, my mother ships my brothers and I honeybells from the Woolbright farmers market in Delray Beach. When we go there in person it also has a fresh and incomparable juice, as well as an array of local and many imported fruits, fresh strawberries picked in the winter in Florida, and local pies, which my mother swears by.  There is something about getting their or other grove fresh juice, and drinking it all, within days of its production that imbues the juice with a taste that store bought brands, no matter how much pulp  they contain cannot replicate.  Of course the fresh juicers are smart enough to often add tangerines too.

In the next week – I get my honey bell shipment, and I am thrilled, in fact one of my brothers and I were instant messaging about it yesterday.  There is nothing better then having your house and hands smell of the sweet citric acid these oranges represent.

I know I must not be the only person who laments the loss of  Bloods and other grove stands like it, that were filled with oranges, marmalades, juice and chotchkies.  I woke up New Years day, collected my paper, and saw a story on the Fort Pierce Grove scene on the front page.  This reminded me of the plant, and the shame it is that so many people, even in Florida, have not experienced the joys of a good fresh orange and its juice.  (Yes there is a difference between Florida and California oranges, just as there is in avocados. The Florida orange is juicer and often larger.  The Florida Avocado has an almost white flesh, is significantly bigger, and has a smooth lighter green skin then its California counterpart, they are also lower in fat and calories).

My mother often complains that there are no fresh foods at farmers markets in Florida, compared to other ares of the country as so much of our produce is shipped out.  Outside of a few grove stands and some avocados, based on experience she is often right.  Which is a shame as Florida has some amazing produce, but so long as the juice is still able to be found when I go home, I will be somewhat content.

The New York Times, seems to have been on a bit of a food crusade beyond just oranges the past few days.  And there were two articles in particular that caught my eye, and I wanted to share.  The first was a front page story on a beef prcoessing method, approved by the FDA, that has been shown to increase ammonia while not killing ecoli and salmonella effectively.  This method is used by beef purchased by major grocery stores, school lunches, and McDonald’s.  If all McDonald’s are doing as well as the one  I stopped by near Amelia Island Florida on my drive up, then we as a country need to worry about the level of ecoli in our own bodies. (I needed a coke to stay awake while driving).  To me this article does nothing but increase the need for people to know where their food comes from – and – to lobby the FDA for safer food processing techniques, that re transportable to the local level.   Secondly, the Times reported that tainted milk was again found at a diary in China – meaning that people will likely be executed again for this problem.  Execution does not seem to be solving the contamination, and they like us, need to rethink ways to regulate food safety.

In response to these articles and the cold, I am holed up with my chili made with local beef cooking on the slow cooker as I settle in for a freezing cold Saturday night.

All text and copyrights preserved by the author 02csb For more information visit http://www.peebesalgy.com Courtney Brown

Create Your Badge  All text and copyrights preserved by the author for words and original pictures and may not be used without author's permission. For more information visit http://www.peebesalgy.com Follow me on Twitter @ http://twitter.com/peebesalgy or contact me directly through http://www.peebesalgy.com/blog/contact-me/ Courtney Brown | Create Your Badge