Pixies were one of the very first tangerines that I tried a few years ago, where they were so good that I made a point to remember the variety. They are sweet and succulent with the perfect acidity; And while they don’t have one of the easy zipper peels, they are seedless. Bonus! The pixies in this lot are a couple inches in diameter. I’ve had them as small as a golf ball when I visited Ojai last year (where they largely grow) and they are all delicious. Supposedly they are available starting in February, but I’ve never run into them until much later. Every year I fear I will be tangerine fatigued by the time they arrive, but it never ever happens. Get thee to the store and get some of these before they run out!

APPEARANCE 4 out of 5 stars

Typical tangerine looks: medium sized, with sunny orange flesh.

AROMA 5 out of 5 stars

Bright, sweet orange scent. I would love a candle that smelled like this. Mmmm.

TEXTURE 5 out of 5 stars

Juicy and luscious, seedless flesh. Lovely.

TASTE 5 out of 5 stars

Sweet and full tangerine flavor. Lightly and ideally acidic.

OVERALL 4.75 out of 5 stars

For me, this is one of the very best tangerines to eat, plus it has an adorable name. Pixie! Pixie! I’ve never had one at the same time as a Shasta Tangerine, so I can’t do an adequate taste test, but one of these two is currently my favorite.

OTHER NONSENSE

True confession: I also like the band, Pixies and the candy, Pixy Stix. So it is altogether possible that I just have a thing for the word pixie. Hard to say.

So it turns out albedo is simply the botanical word for pith, the spongy and often bitter, protective layer between the fruit inside and the zest layer on the outside. Put another way, the albedo (or pith) + the zest = the peel (or skin or rind).

So the next time your friend cuts open a fruit like this one, you can think of me and calmy say, “Oh hey – look at the albedo on that baby! It forms the outline of two perfect mitten shapes on that pommelo. How perfectly delightful!” To which your friend will likely either laugh or just look at you puzzled – both fun in my book.

Pommelo

APPEARANCE 3 out of 5 stars

Humongous (this is the largest planet in my citrus solar system project after all!). Pretty green skin with 1 inch thick albedo and pink flesh.

AROMA 3 out of 5 stars

Clear but mild grapefruit.

TEXTURE 2.5 out of 5 stars

Pretty difficult to cut with a common butter knife (whereas the Melogold I was also tasting cut easily). The flesh was almost crunchy with some juice. No seeds.

TASTE 3 out of 5 stars

Extremely mellow, slightly sweet grapefruit flavor without any bitterness and very little acidity.

OVERALL 2.88 out of 5 stars

This citrus was basically crunchy and bland, which are not words I’m ever hoping to say after eating citrus, particularly one I associate with the complex and assertive profile of a grapefruit. Bleh.

NOTES

Pommelos also go by the name pummelo, pomelo, Chinese grapefruit and shaddock. I personally would go by shaddock if I were a pommelo. It has a certain cowboy swagger, which I feel I would need if I tasted like this.

Today we have an entry in the “You-paid-how-much-for-ANOTHER-tool-for-cutting-fruit?” category. You could keep using the $1 version but of course all your friends will be judging you. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Apostrophe Orange Peeler by Gabriele Chiave for Alessi

APPEARANCE 5 out of 5 stars

Sleek, sexy and a little unnerving.

USABILITY 4.5 out of 5 stars

I don’t have one, but my guess from the looks of it, is that it would work great if the hook is sharp enough and it doesn’t slip out of your hands. The last thing I would want is to drop that on my toe.

PRICE 1 out of 5 stars

At $27 a pop, this is another outrageously priced tool that I really want someone to buy for me. Maybe you could also use it for some really fancy crocheting.

OVERALL 3.5 out of 5 stars

I already find playing with fruit to be extremely fun and satisfying. Having a tool like this would just increase the appeal and I’m all for that. Plus can you imagine having a guest over and as you are mixing up a hand crafted cocktail, you pull this out of the drawer to whip up a quick garnish. Their eyes widen and “Ohhhhh! Wow! What is that?” slips out of their mouth. To which you reply, “What? This old thing?” Suddenly that $27 doesn’t feel so high to me.

You really can not imagine how torn I was over what to do with poor Pluto. I grew up with Pluto as a planet and I just couldn’t leave it out. But I couldn’t deny the fact that it has been relegated to the commoner life of a lowly dwarf planet. So in an effort to acknowledge this disconcerting fact, Pluto is present but just as a blueberry. Sad, sad times.

*I would also like credit for the great restraint required to not make any Uranus jokes.

The Cast:

Mercury: Nagami Kumquat
Venus: Meyer Lemon
Earth: Moro Blood Orange
Mars: Bearrs Lime
Jupiter: Pummelo
Saturn: Melogold Grapefruit
Uranus: Star Ruby Grapefruit
Neptune: Navel Orange
Pluto: Blueberry

The collection spans over 22 acres and has over 1100 varieties of citrus with at least 4 trees of each type. Let us pause and just take that in for a moment.

1100+ varieties of citrus.

Blink. Blink.

My lips are tingling just thinking about it. I remember a few years ago when I started documenting the fruit I eat. If you had asked me then to guess how many types of citrus there are in the world, I probably would have guessed somewhere around 100 and that would have been me trying to impress you with my vast knowledge.

The day was filled with various speakers along with tours through the orchard focusing on some of the more unique items in the collection. There were many types of mandarins that I hadn’t seen or heard of before, but I wasn’t particularly surprised by this. There was really only one piece of fruit that completely wowed me: the Bael Fruit. It has an extremely hard shell that we had to step on in order to break open. The inside was tragically gelatinous with a robust mango smell. Against my better judgement, I licked my fingers. I would say it mostly tasted like nothing but I didn’t get to really take it in before someone shouted, “I think that’s poisonous.” Um…well ok then. (Turns out it is not at all poisonous and is used for medicinal purposes in Asia on a regular basis but I didn’t actually know that until about 10 minutes ago.) So that was a fun experience.

I also got to see another fingerlime. I was hoping to see some of the more vibrantly colored varieties but they were mostly green. This one did have a hint of pink, which was a great surprise.

One way they distilled down the large number of fruit to try was an exhibit delightfully entitled, “Meet the Parents”. Various mandarins and grapefruits were set out on a table for tasting. Then there were lines indicating crosses and the new citrus it produced.  I probably tried around 20 new types of mandarin that I hadn’t had before, which I shoved in to my mouth in about 10 minutes as I didn’t realize the table would be out all day. My instincts to acquire and consume new fruit just took over.  I’m glad you weren’t there to see it. Not pretty. Not pretty at all. Let’s just say one lesson of the day is that I should never have access to poisonous fruit. My policy appears to be “eat first, think later.”

So it was a great day and I have been thinking ever since I left about why exactly I couldn’t stop talking about it. I think I called four different people on my way home to yammer on about all the fun things I saw and people I met. I remember one particular friend laughing adoringly and saying, “So you would say you had a good time then?”

Yes. I had a good time. And among everything I already listed, I think ultimately the reason I enjoyed it so much comes down to the same reason I write Fruit Maven at all: It made my world simultaneously bigger and smaller. It expanded what I believed to be true about this world – the infinite uniqueness and beauty of it all. The orange on my counter that I have eaten so many times on so many days in my life is no longer just an orange. It is now the entrance point to a world of over 1100 different flavors and colors and textures.  That orange is also something so simple, so organic and basic and sustaining. I don’t mean to get overly mushy, but I was standing in the middle of this long row of trees, looking at a huge group of bright yellow citrus laying on the ground and thinking, “This is it. This is real life. THIS is being alive.”