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This is Highly Recommend, a column dedicated to what people in the food industry are obsessed with eating, drinking, and buying right now.
One of the worst things you can get in the mail is a fine for an E-ZPass violation, $100 for each of three missed $9 tolls that you will never, ever successfully dispute. But thankfully, per Newton’s Third Law, things will come back around when a 10-pound box of tangerines shows up in the middle of frigid February. One of the best things you can get in the mail.
Last Christmas, when my family asked what I wanted, I replied: BIG BOX OF TANGERINES. I sent the link to OjaiPixies.com. You have to order them a few weeks/months in advance, so when they show up on a snowy winter day right when you totally forgot you made that bossy request, well, what a pleasant surprise!
The tangerines—or oranges, grapefruit, lemons, a few avocados, you have a lot of choices—are from Friend’s Ranch in Ojai, California, 2,315 miles away from me. Last year, I ordered a mixed box that had several varieties of seeded, seedless, tiny and big tangerines, all as sweet as candy and cute as a button. Some are so small they fit into your puffer coat pockets, which is a great place to store them. These seasonal California tangerines make the year-round oranges I buy here in Michigan (for cocktails only) look like plastic props in comparison, bitter and bland.
And this year, demand for the Pixies has only grown. In fact, you have to keep checking back on the Friend’s Ranch site to catch its restocks every Tuesday, at around 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. ET. I just snagged “The Plain Jane” box this week, which I’m crossing my fingers contains a few avocados. Yes, there’s hype for seasonal fruit now. Set your calendar alert. Do what you need to do!
Sidenote: Some of the fancy citrus have great names like “Yosemite Gold” and “Gold Nuggets,” which remind me of greedy men sifting rocks in dried riverbeds. If only they knew where the real riches were! (In their hearts—and in mail-order citrus farming.)
With 10 pounds of citrus, what to do?! I juiced a few seedy but supersweet Dancy tangerines into a mason jar, then dropped in a halved jalapeño to make margaritas with later. I juiced a few more to make my favorite poppyseed pound cake, which is moister-than-moist thanks to all that juice. Citrus salads with fatty cheeses or fatty avocado for contrast. Upside-down cakes. Curd bars! Candied peels. Homemade house cleaner. Marmalade! I gave them out to coworkers and friends. I peeled them and snacked on them and then had that dreaded-wonderful orange scent stuck on my hands all day. If you think 10 pounds of citrus is too much for a single person, I’m sorry to say that’s just a lack of imagination.