Orange Season, Now's The Time to Eat Them

Our tree's oranges are already bright orange

Perfect catch for "Orange" challenge, 52Frames

After almost a half a century in Israel, a unique country that is simultaneously agricultural/nature oriented and high tech, I religiously buy my fruit and some of the vegetables seasonally.

Years (decades) ago I read that fruits and vegetables are healthiest in the season they ripen. And as I remember the article stated that if you try to get around it, cheat, by eating imported fruit from a country in the opposite hemisphere, it won't have the same benefit.

Way back when, when one of my summer babies was a few weeks old, we got oranges very cheaply, so I ate a lot of them. Oranges are a winter fruit. Here in Israel I've learned not to buy them until a couple of weeks after the first rains, so they'll be sweet. The oranges were sweet, since they had been stored well. Suddenly I noticed that my baby had a terrible rash. None of older children had ever had a rash like that. Since the baby was fully nursing, I guessed that something I was eating must have been triggering the rash.

I experimented by cutting out oranges from my diet. Like magic the rash cleared!

In addition, we don't drink juices, even fresh juice. And I certainly don't drink orange juice. One of the last times I drank orange juice was a summer when visiting New York. I had orange juice in the break fast meal after the 25 hour fast of Tisha B'Av. I felt such awful burning in my mouth that since then I'm unable to have raw fruit when breaking a fast. But that's another story and the reason I try to make a good vegetable soup...

Look at This! Surprise 🌝

This year has been an exceptionally blessed year for rain, here in the Holy Land. And in addition I had taken a neighbor's advice and watered the two barren citrus trees in our garden.

One tree is a lemon tree I had bought well over twenty years ago, and the other is from a sapling one of our sons brought back from a hike a few years after we had planted the lemon tree. We'll refer to the second one as "the mystery tree."

Over a decade ago, I remember seeing some small orange fruit on the mystery tree but don't remeber even trying to eat them. They were terribly small and hard.

For the past few months I've been noticing a number of orange-colored fruit growing on the mystery tree. At first they seemed to high to be picked, but yesterday when I walked by, I could see that there were quite a few of these fruit low enough, even for me. So, today, after my morning walk, I went over to the tree and decided to take a better look.

I picked one fruit from the tree, smelled it decided to take a bite. What could be wrong? They hadn't even sprayed with poisons. Yes, they're organic, completely organic.

One of my guesses, due to size, was that they were some sort of clementina, which is a small tangerine, an easy to peel citrus fruit. Here in Israel the clementina is the first of the winter citrus fruit offered for sale, late summer, early winter. The clementina has a very thin skin/peel, thinner than any orange I'm familiar with.

Test #1 This mystery fruit has a relatively thick skin for its size, but as you can see in the pictures, it's a tiny fruit. Now, I don't know if the mystery fruit is supposed to be small, or if the difficult dry and cold climate here has damaged/stunted it.

Test #2 was the taste test. The mystery fruit tastes something like an orange. I'll leave them on the tree a bit longer and taste them periodically, to see if they get sweeter with time. Of course the challenge is to pick them before they rot on the tree.

I'd be grateful for advice, thanks.

Our TU B'Shvat Seder and Memories

Most Jews, and even many non-Jews, know about the Pesach/Passover Seder, where we are commanded to eat matzah, that dry tasteless cracker like bread and drink four cups of wine. But there's another seder, which has been gaining in popularity, the TU B'Shvat Seder. For a Jewish religious ceremony, it's rather new, only a few hundred years or so.

Growing up in American in the 1950s, we got bags of dried fruit and nuts to commemorate TU B'Shvat at the Oakland Jewish Center Hebrew School. Friends and neighbors from all over the world, a bit younger and older than myself, have similar memories. We were told that the raisins, figs, almonds and bokser, dried carob pods were from Israel, and on TU B'Shvat we opened our brown paper gift bags to eat them together.

In Israel, when we lived in Bayit Vegan, Jerusalem, the preschools would walk to the large almond tree near our building and serenade it singing השקדיה פורחת Hashkaydia Porachat, The Almond Tree is Blooming. We'd have to send various fruit with our young daughters which would be made into a large large fruit salad. That was all the TU B'Shvat celebration I knew of.

After we moved to Shiloh, we began hearing about and being invited to various TU B'Shvat s'derim, which seemed to vary from year to year and host to host. The most memorable one, which was attended by lots of olim chadashim, new immigrants from the USSR and "adopting families." This TU B'Shvat seder included drinking four cups of wine, beginning with white wine and ending with a dark red wine.

I highly doubt that we've ever been to two TU B'Shvat s'darim that used the same text/instructions. Last night we went to our daughter's family in Ofra, and it was totally different from any other. There was barely a mention of wine. If I understood correctly, this one emphasized the seven species of grain and fruit grown naturally here in the Land of Israel. It was accompanied by a delicious meat meal.

The Seder TU B'Shvat we used was very "child friendly," and the younger grandchildren there really participated it. Our grandson kept quizzing us with tree related riddles he had heard. Some were solved with general knowledge, while others were more like puns.

Since the celebration of TU B'Shvat is very flexible, there's a way to commemorate the day that suits all. Following are a few links to help you:

The Tu B’Shvat Revolution
Kabbalistic Tu B'shvat Seder
Tu B’Shevat: Basics
ABCs of Tu B’Shvat

What's Growing?

We have two citrus trees next to our house. One is a lemon tree I bought in a store, but I don't remember any lemons ever growing on it. The other may be an orange tree. One of our sons brought home a seedling, he found on a hike in the south of Israel and then planted it. We never really got anything edible from that one either. Both trees have been growing  in our garden for over twenty years.

To be perfectly honest, I can't remember which is which. They are about the same size and grow side by side, near where we have the clotheslines.

A few days ago, I noticed some fruit tucked into the leaves of one of the trees. Maybe we'll get to eat the fruit of the tree later on. And maybe we won't. We'd need quite a ladder to reach high up and inside.

What do you think? Any citrus experts out there?

Mangos, Yum

Early yesterday morning, when I was in a Jerusalem supermarket looking for fruit to have with my goat yogurt for breakfast in Matan I noticed these mangos. I felt them, and they were soft, ripe, edible. To be perfectly honest there was something a bit suspicious about them. They seemed a bit too ripe, a bit too soft in some places and colorful to be fruit of the new season.

My guess is that they had been in cold storage over the winter, but I bought one anyway.  It tasted great!

Breakfast Tweak Prevents Sugar Craving

Reporting on how my switching from a nice full vegetable omelet to fruit and goat yogurt has affected my food cravings. A few months ago I found myself craving sweets and fruit at best after eating a nice big vegetable omelet. And I also couldn't get the 3-4 kilo which had snuck on back off. So I decided to change my breakfast to fruit and goat yogurt. In the beginning I sometimes even added some oats.

apple, peach, ginger slivers and goat yogurt

Well, the results are even better than I had expected. I no longer crave something sweet, eat less fruit during the day and I lost the few kilo, thank Gd.

There are times that we must listen to our "cravings" and then use them as guides. If you find a way to prevent them, you gain control and can even lose weight.

Have you any easy diet tips like this one?

Nu, And How's The Diet Going?

It's certainly no secret that I have been struggling with my weight for a very log time. A number of years ago, I made it a very public diet which you can find by using the search engine of this blog by asking for "public diet," "diet saga," "low carbohydrate" and other labels.

I did manage to rid myself of about fifteen 15 kilo or thirty plus 30+ pounds, most of which has stayed off ever since, but about a third, five kilo found their way back about a year ago. When that unwanted weight had reached three kilo, I went to war, but lost the battle and gained another two kilo. But about six months ago, after the pool closed, I tried a few different tricks, about some of which I have blogged.

Over 12,000 steps is pretty rare for me.
12,000 is now very common.

The first thing I did was to make more time to walk, since the pool had closed. Three months of water exercise hadn't reduced much, except that my body looked and felt better. And even the experts say that walking is better for weight reduction than swimming. I increased my daily steps, as I could see on the pedometer.

The second thing I did to lose weight was to change my breakfast. For years I had been eating a large vegetable omelet, but not that long ago I felt terrible sugar/fruit cravings as soon as I finished it. I took that as a hint. Maybe I need to eat fruit for breakfast, since the omelets and vegetables weren't satisfying my hunger.

Now, for the past few months, I have fruit, fresh ginger and goat yogurt for breakfast. I must admit that there are days when I crave cashews afterwards, so I eat a few. It's clear that I need more protein early in the day in addition to the sugar/fructose.

Another thing I've noticed, and I do weigh myself almost daily on the same scale, is that the fewer restaurant or catered meals I eat, the lower my weight is. It goes up a bit when I've eaten out. And it's lowest when all the food I've eaten has been my own home cooking.

My weight seems to have stabilized close to where it was post-big diet, bli eyin haraa, let's not tempt the "evil eye." I do have days when I eat things I "shouldn't," but there are diet mavins who actually  say that once a week or two it is good to go off the restrictions. It stimulates the metabolism to work harder and burn calories more quickly. Also, it makes the "diet" easier to live with, and that is a major trick/technique. If you adopt a diet you find impossible to live with, you won't be able to stick to it very long.

And how is your diet going?

Why Do I "Crave" Persimmons?

Persimmons are one of the foods, like avocados and artichokes, that not only had I never eaten before moving to Israel, but I had never even heard of. Actually I can make a very long list of foods in that category. Another would be a pomegranate. I really don't remember them from New York. Last year they were my "craved fruit." This year, I really can't make myself eat them

This is the year of the persimmon. But what has me stymied is what vitamin or mineral is in that pretty orange fruit that my body is demanding?

Wikipedia gives two different nutrition charts. I'm not sure which type of persimmon they have here in Israel. It may even be different from the two they list.

American persimmons, raw
Diospyros virginiana

Nutritional value per 100 g (3.5 oz)
Energy	531 kJ (127 kcal)
Carbohydrates	33.5 g
Sugars	n/a
Dietary fiber	n/a
Fat	0.4 g
Protein	0.8 g
Vitamins
Vitamin C	(80%) 66 mg
Minerals
Calcium	(3%) 27 mg
Iron	(19%) 2.5 mg
Phosphorus	(4%) 26 mg
Potassium	(7%) 310 mg
Sodium	(0%) 1 mg
Link to USDA Database entry

Japanese persimmons, raw
Diospyros kaki

Nutritional value per 100 g (3.5 oz)
Energy	293 kJ (70 kcal)
Carbohydrates	18.59 g
Sugars	12.53 g
Dietary fiber	3.6 g
Fat	0.19 g
Protein	0.58 g
Vitamins
Vitamin A equiv. beta-Carotene lutein zeaxanthin	(10%) 81 μg (2%) 253 μg 834 μg
Thiamine (B1)	(3%) 0.03 mg
Riboflavin (B2)	(2%) 0.02 mg
Niacin (B3)	(1%) 0.1 mg
Vitamin B6	(8%) 0.1 mg
Folate (B9)	(2%) 8 μg
Choline	(2%) 7.6 mg
Vitamin C	(9%) 7.5 mg
Vitamin E	(5%) 0.73 mg
Vitamin K	(2%) 2.6 μg
Minerals
Calcium	(1%) 8 mg
Iron	(1%) 0.15 mg
Magnesium	(3%) 9 mg
Manganese	(17%) 0.355 mg
Phosphorus	(2%) 17 mg
Potassium	(3%) 161 mg
Sodium	(0%) 1 mg
Zinc	(1%) 0.11 mg
Link to USDA Database entry

In all honesty, it's a pretty tame craving and a lot healthier than chocolate, roasted nuts or ice cream.

What do you think?