oranges

i like oranges. God knows i used to eat a whole bag of cuties on my own. i would take two when i passed the kitchen, and when i ate those i got up to get two more. then by an hour had passed i would do it again.

they never used to buy normal oranges, just the cuties. i also loved the packaged mandarin oranges in syrup. id open the cup and drink them. I’m a big fan or foods i can simply drink, or at least foods i don’t have to touch to eat.

i also used to refuse to eat normal oranges. they were just too hard and messy to eat. with cuties all i have to do is stick my fingernail under the skin and pull the peel away, kind of like opening an envelope. the cuties are also very contained, you just pull the sections apart easily from the hole in the middle.

then i would usually spend like 5 minutes picking off every small piece of pith that dared to exist on my orange. i don’t do that anymore because it doesn’t really matter that much, i mostly did it because i was very odd child who like making rituals out of eating fruit. I spend about half and hour to forty five minutes cracking open pomegranates and i don’t like them all that much. I like them sure, but not an entire bowl of them. I just like the act of opening it and meticulously picking off every bit of its pith from the seeds. my pomegranate seeds were the cleanest ever. every one that was just a bit too squishy but not off, i just ate instead of putting it in the bowl.

nowadays i like normal oranges. even though trying to get though the peel pushes at my nail bed and it hurts. i like cutting the orange peel with my knife instead of peeling it, it leaves a nice flat glistening surface since it cutes into the orange itself. the orange is a nice geometric shape and only the pith between segments is left. I eat it like an apple instead of trying to separate the segments. its very messy but i have so far embraced it and i am a lot happier for it. i simply make sure i have a paper towel under the orange. the juice is a lot sweeter than in the cuties. it has a better mouthfeel as well.

its a lot different now than it used to be. i didn’t like peeling oranges because it hurts and there was always a lot of pith left and it would get juice everywhere and sticky. theres almost always the second small segment cluster right in the middle that i had to dig out so i could split the segment from the middle.

i haven’t had cuties or normal oranges in a while now but i like them both. though lately the cuties haven’t been very ripe and i have no idea how to pick out oranges. i’d rather have normal oranges now, even if they take more effort to eat.