Vitamin C

We've pin pointed our favorite fruit stand out on Merritt Island. Last week we were lucky enough to meet the owner of the beautiful property and fruit stand. He is a friendly old farmer that loves eating and growing good food. It was delightful to talk with him and he showed us around his property, giving us bites and sniffs of so many wonderful things! He even gave me a loquat tree to plant in my yard. Off the top of my head, some of the fun things he showed us: curry(!), bay tree, passion fruit, bananas, lemon grass, allspice, orchid, mango, papaya, fig, and loquat (japanese plum). And all of the fruit in the photo below came from his groves.

Pictured from left to right: white grapefruit, caribbean papaya, persian limes, carambola (starfruit), palmelo, meyers lemons, and ORANGES (the green ones are even ripe - color depends on variety, among other things). Thanks Grandma for washing all this fruit!

Did you know some of those bright orange oranges you buy in the grocery store are actually 'gassed' with ethylene gas in 100% humidity or dyed with coloring to get them to look that orange? Ugh, the food industry in our country is so messed up. Needless to say, the juice squeezed from these local oranges is ethereal. I'd been avoiding getting a juicer since they are spendy, but my mom had the genius idea to get the citrus juicer attachment for the kitchen aid. It was much cheaper and we have one less appliance taking up space in the kitchen, yes! We're getting lazy around here, and drinking more juice at the same time, ha!

Have you seen these before? Genius! It's called the citra-sipper. You simply jam it down into the orange and sip out the juice.