Love Those Wide Open Spaces

Monday, March 4, 2013

Citrus Season Recipes from Florida

Last week I told you about our foray to the groves to glean the last of the orange crop ahead of some serious weather. Well, after writing that post, I received a lot of questions about just what our Florida families did with all those oranges that we harvested. So let me share.

The absolute favorite use of oranges in our area is to eat them fresh or to make our own orange juice. That’s where maybe 50% of our group’s harvest goes. We swap with neighbors and bring them to friends. These old grove oranges are fresh but not as beautiful as store-bought oranges. But at the same time, they haven’t been doused with chemicals or fertilizer either. They’re naturally organic, and people love the taste of them.

A lot the girls are good with preserving, so kitchens in the area are alive with orange marmalade production. My husband thinks there’s no other jam in the world to match the marvels of marmalade, so this is his time of year!

Among the group, we have plenty of favorite orange chicken recipes. Families are eating Chinese recipes or South Asian or Florida Cracker recipes for dinner courtesy of our gleaning. You can find orange chicken, orange pork and orange beef dinners on the stove with mama roasting, sautéing, and even deep frying with oranges this time of year.

And of course, there are the baked goods. The girls bake up muffins, cupcakes, pound cake, bundt cakes and layer cakes all made from oranges. We’ll see tortes and pies, and cookies and candies. Some of the goodies will be eaten fresh from the oven, and others will be frozen for eating later.

My favorite use of oranges is in fresh green salads. I love the sunny feel this combination brings to the table. I’ll serve them for the family, true; but I’ll also bring them into town and share with the girls at the beauty salon or maybe the folks at the tax accountant’s office during lunch hour. I’ll bring along a quick bread, a little soup and a fresh salad, and everyone will feel like they’ve been out to lunch for the day. It’s a simple, small pleasure for all of us.

While I can’t bring you lunch today, I can bring you some new ideas to try. Here are a few of my favorite green salad recipes which sparkle with the flavor of oranges.

Enjoy!

Mixed Baby Greens with Oranges, Dried Cranberries and Pecans

1 cup plus 3 tablespoons orange juice

6 tablespoons dried cranberries

3 1/2 tablespoons olive oil

2 tablespoons white wine vinegar

1 tablespoon grated orange peel

6 cups mixed baby greens

3 oranges cut into segments – remove peel and pith

3/4 cup toasted pecans or praline pecans

Dressing:

Simmer 1 cup orange juice in a small, heavy saucepan then remove from heat.

Mix in dried cranberries and let stand until softened—usually around 30 minutes. Drain well; discard juice you soaked them in.

Whisk oil, vinegar, orange peel and the remaining 3 tablespoons orange juice in small bowl.

Mix in cranberries and season to taste with salt and pepper.

Dressing can be made 1 day ahead if covered and refrigerated. You’ll want to bring the dressing to room temperature before serving.

Assemble Salad

Place greens in large bowl and toss with 2/3rds of the dressing, then plate greens.

Place orange segments into your mixing bowl and toss with remaining dressing.

Top your individual salads with orange segments and toasted or praline pecans and serve.

Mixed Greens Salad with Fresh Citrus Vinaigrette – Topped with Oranges, Walnuts and Gorgonzola Cheese

3/4 cup walnut halves

10 ounces mixed salad greens with arugula

2 large navel oranges, peeled and sectioned

1/2 cup sliced red onion

1/4 cup olive oil

1/4 cup vegetable oil

2/3 cup orange juice

1/4 cup white sugar

2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

2 teaspoons Dijon mustard

1/4 teaspoon dried oregano

1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper

1/4 cup crumbled Gorgonzola cheese

Empty jar with lid

Dressing:

In a large empty jar, mix olive oil, vegetable oil, orange juice, sugar, vinegar, mustard, oregano, and pepper.

Seal jar, and shake to mix.

Assemble Salad:

Over medium heat, roast the walnuts in a small skillet for 5 minutes stirring constantly. You want the walnuts to be lightly browned.

Add salad greens, oranges, red onion and toasted walnuts into a large bowl and toss.

Plate salad into salad plates. Top with Gorgonzola cheese. Drizzle dressing over top of salad.

Citrus – Cilantro Vinaigrette with Salad Greens

Ingredients for Vinaigrette

1 cup packed cilantro

1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil

1/4 cup lime juice

1/4 cup orange juice

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground pepper

Pinch of minced garlic

Ingredients for Salad

2 large oranges

8 cups mixed salad greens

1 avocado, diced

1/4 cup slivered red onion

1/2 cup Cilantro-Lime Vinaigrette

Vinaigrette Dressing

Puree cilantro, oil, lime juice, orange juice, salt, pepper and garlic in a blender or food processor until smooth.

Assemble Salad

Cut oranges into segments removing both peel and pith.

In a large bowl, add salad greens, avocado, red onion and vinaigrette.

Toss and plate.

You can store extra dressing in the refrigerator for up to 2 days.

Salad with Oranges, Fennel and Pomegranate

Salad Ingredients

1 head butter or romaine lettuce

3-4 medium oranges

1 large pomegranate, arils removed

Or purchase packaged arils (seeds)

1 medium to large fennel bulb, thinly sliced

Dressing Ingredients

1 tablespoon white balsamic or white wine vinegar

1 tablespoon fresh squeezed orange juice

4 tablespoons olive oil

1/4-1/2 teaspoon salt

1/8 teaspoon pepper

A pinch sugar

Dressing

Whisk together vinegar, juice, oil, salt, pepper and sugar. Place in serving carafe.

Assemble Salad

Wash, dry, and tear the lettuce into bite sized pieces.

Slice oranges into sections, removing the peel and pith. (Use either orange sections or round slices, whichever you prefer.)

Layer the salad either in serving bowl or on individual plates in the following manner: lettuce, fennel slices, orange, lettuce fennel, orange. Repeat until all three ingredients have been used. Top with pomegranate arils.

Top with dressing.

Don’t Want to Make Your Own Dressing? Try this salad:

Assemble salad greens, sliced cucumber, orange slices, sliced green onions and peanuts. Top with your favorite store-bought ginger dressing.

Sanne Collins

From the Ranch in Florida

What’s Been Keeping Me Busy Lately

Love Those Wide Open Spaces is a blog designed to follow my daily life as a freelance writer and rancher. It’s a life full of constant change and a wide scope of interests.

Freelance writing, by its definition, requires the ability to write on a variety of subjects, to juggle many assignments during the times of plenty, and to fill the void when checks are slow. That said, I’m always writing.

Much of my work is done for others such as corporations, websites, or articles penned under another’s name. I’ve sold the rights to these works, so they can’t be shared.

However, many of my projects are available under my own name and can be read right here on the web.

You can click on either the site or the story below to see them.

Check out what’s been keeping me busy lately!

Rural Florida Living
Florida Outdoors: What You Can See in March
The Florida Azalea Festival - The Pride of Palatka
Famous Floridian Friday: Tom Petty, Rock Legend and Florida Native
The Alligator Snapping Turtle - Florida's Largest Freshwater Turtle
Fort Mose in St. Augustine, Florida - The First Free African Settlement in the US

City to Country - A Rural Florida Adventure
We Learn What to Look for When Buying Hay

A Field Full of Babies

Love Those Wide Open Spaces
Citrus Season Recipes from Florida
Gleaning in the Groves
This is My Brain on Writing
Mudfest in Okeechobee
Trading Treasures - Pepper Jam
Super Bowl Party

Winter Weather
The Project's Over

Florida: Just For Fun!
Things to Do in Florida This Weekend - Friday, March 1st thru Sunday, March 3rd, 2013
Things to Do in Florida This Weekend - Friday, February 22nd thru Sunday, February 24th, 2013

Sanne On Squidoo Blog
How to Write for Squidoo - How to Prepare an Article for Online Publishing on Squidoo
Write Biographies on Squidoo
Looking for a Subject? Ideas for Writing Online
How to Tailor Your Squidoo Article to Your Audience
How to Get Traffic to New Articles on Squidoo
What Can I Write About on Squidoo?
Have You Squidoo'ed?

@SanneCollins 2013

Saturday, March 2, 2013

Gleaning in the Groves

www.lovethosewideopenspaces.blogspot.com

Chinese Plums

We’re anticipating the arrival of winter fronts bringing several days of cold weather and maybe freezes, so much time this week went to preparing again for “weather”.

Forecasters tell us 3 cold fronts are coming this first week of March, and it is a worry to all of us.

Talk around this small Florida town is all about harvesting everything possible to avert the loss of food crops. It’s in this vein that a small group of friends and I drove out to an old homestead yesterday where we knew we’d be welcomed to glean oranges.

The months of February and March bring the Florida citrus season to an end, so citrus was to be our focus. To be sure, there are varieties that fruit well into May, but these are the stragglers and the new varieties, not the rule.

By this time of year, our tangerines have dropped and gone to the deer and small mammals, and what’s left of the Valencia oranges must be picked now or forgotten.

My country girlfriends and I loaded up our pick-ups with poles for pickin’ and baskets for haulin’, and drove out to the woods and old groves where we’d find enough fruit yet to harvest.

Seven of us ladies would be gleaning, and we were all dressed for the job. Citrus trees, which look so beautiful when they blossom, are in reality quite aggressive trees covered in large thorns. We’d need to protect ourselves from these daggers all day. We donned hats to cover our hair, leather gloves for covering our hands, and long sleeved shirts, heavy “britches”, and a good pair of boots to protect the rest of our bodies. You can be sure there were no rhinestone cowgirls in this group.

Old groves are interesting microcosms of life. We expect we’ll see birds and snakes, deer and ‘coons, possums and armadillos, foxes, skunks and even the occasional rodent. And since these groves were located near the creek, we might spot otters, gators, or even a spring bear. Yes, a few of our “Annies” were packin’.*

We spread out sheets under the trees to catch the oranges we’d be “poling”, so the atmosphere had the feel of a spring picnic. Pickin’ poles came out and each of us found our own orange tree and began to harvest oranges.

I like to use what the saltwater fishermen call a boat hook when I pole oranges. This stainless steel pole is lightweight and just long enough for me to reach the top of the orange tree. I then wrap the barbed hook around an orange and give it a snapping pull to bring down the fruit. In no time flat, I’ve got myself an orange harvest.

The girls and I subscribe to the policy of “take a few, leave a few” when harvesting oranges, and we only take what we can share with friends and family, and our day in the old grove is not as long as those who work them professionally. We make sure to leave fruit in the grasses for ground animals, and others are left in the trees for those animals which climb. After all, critters have to eat too, don’t they?

The day is filled with opportunities to scout the surrounding woods for lone trees with fresher fruit and to hunt for individual specimens with unique varieties to offer. This is how we came upon what’s called a “Chinese Plum” tree by folks in this area.

The fruit of the Chinese Plum resembles a small apricot and tastes looks nothing like a plum, so who knows how it got its common name. But, oh my gosh—they’re tasty!

The flavor of the Chinese Plum is somewhere between a peach and a papaya, so it tastes tropical yet familiar. We girls eat these little fruits like they’re kernels of popcorn; picking like there’s no tomorrow, and filling our pockets so we’ll have plenty of reserves. Very little of the Chinese Plum harvest made it back to our kitchens, so I’m afraid there will be no recipes of Chinese Plum cobbler, pie or jam to share.

But we had a memorable day outdoors doing what folks have always done together: gathering in friendly groups, working on joint projects, making the task at-hand enjoyable, and sharing in the combined harvest.

I left the group a happier person than I arrived. Funny how fresh air and sunshine can do that. We’d spent the day exercising outdoors without expensive recreational equipment, and entertaining ourselves without the help of technology. We socialized with one another without spending a single cent.

I pulled in our lane later in the day with a truck bed filled with buckets full of oranges. Some oranges would be incorporated into next week’s meals; some would be preserved; still others would be passed along to friends.

But the true meaning of the day came into my consciousness as I glanced in my rearview mirror. There, I viewed the reflection of a comfortable woman toting home the fruit she’d gathered off the land this day. And if you looked closely, you could see the exotic juice of Chinese Plums she shared with friends had stained the chin on her face.

This is a good way to live.

Stay warm, my friends! The cold wind is upon us.

- Sanne Collins

From the Ranch in Florida

**a few of our “Annies” were packin’- A few of the girls brought along their guns. This was not to shoot any animals that we saw ( or for hunting), but to have ready in the off-chance we needed protection. Protection from what? Our main worry would be aggressive snakes or a rabid mammal. Neither are rampant, but if you come across either, someone needs to shoot to save a life--and you can’t shoot if you don’t have a gun.

What’s Been Keeping Me Busy Lately

Love Those Wide Open Spaces is a blog designed to follow my daily life as a freelance writer and rancher. It’s a life full of constant change and a wide scope of interests.

Much of my work is done for others such as corporations, websites, or articles penned under another’s name. I’ve sold the rights to these works, so they can’t be shared.

However, many of my projects are available under my own name and can be read right here on the web.

You can click on either the site or the story below to see them.

Check out what’s been keeping me busy lately!