Oh My Darlin’…
November 22, 2004
I tasted Christmas this morning – first time this year. I had a Clementine. It was juicy and delicious and made me think of pine needles, candy canes, foil bows, and Christmas stockings. I always find it amazing how a particular food item, like music, can transport you to a time or place in your memory. It is truly one of the pleasures of eating.
Every Christmas, I always had to wait until everyone in my family was, not only up and out of bed, but showered and fed breakfast, before I was allowed to open any Christmas presents. It was a cruel and unusual punishment. To compensate for this, however, my stocking was fair game as soon as I opened my eyes. I always found it at the foot of my bed when I woke up, and every year I explored its contents on my own before anyone else was awake. Then I would take it into my parents’ room to show them what I had received, not realizing that they probably had a good idea of that already.
I always found a Clementine in my stocking.
My Santa Claus must have felt that I needed that serving of fruit, perhaps to balance the sweets that she also included in the stocking. Of course, I always yanked it out of the toe of my stocking and set it aside in order to get to the chocolate first – and I know my Santa Claus would have done the same thing – but clearly receiving a Clementine was a memorable part of Christmas morning every year.
The “Christmas morning Clementine” was not the first Clementine I tasted each year. Indeed, my Christmas Clementine was just one of many in a bowl in the kitchen that was replenished for the entire month of December and beyond. For those winter months, it was always possible to pass through the kitchen and grab a juicy fruit. Sometimes we stored them in the crates in which they came, and I watched as the supply decreased rapidly over the season.
Clementines are a popular fruit, and it’s really no surprise. A cross between a Chinese Mandarin and a sweet orange, Clementines do away with the two biggest drawbacks to eating an orange: they have a very easy-to-peel skin and almost all varieties are seedless. No-one seems to know their exact history. Some believe that the Clementine was a mandarin hybrid discovered by a monk in Algeria called Father Clement Rodier around the turn of the 20th century. Others believe that it was simply an ancient Asian variety of mandarin brought to Europe through human migration.
Though Clementines have been available in Europe for years, they were only really introduced to the American market recently when a bad frost hurt Florida’s orange crops and the American public needed their citrus fix. These days Clementines are grown in California, but we can also find delicious varieties imported from Spain, Morocco and other North African countries. Look for specimens that are heavy for their size which will indicate a juicy fruit. If you’re buying a crate of Clementines, look for those that are uniform in color. This will tell you that all the fruit were harvested at the same time and degree of ripeness.
Many people find the taste of a Clementine reminiscent of Christmas. It’s not really a huge surprise, since their season truly starts in mid November and runs through February. It’s just that as kids, we don’t really take into consideration the natural growing seasons of fruit unless we ourselves grow up on a farm. I, for one, just knew a Clementine was a wintertime holiday fruit. Like a gift, we were only able to enjoy this fruit at Christmastime – doesn’t everything around that time of year revolve around Christmas for kids? After that the darling fruit was gone and lost …well, not forever, but for another year.
The last sentence reminded me of your essay on Oscar Wilde.
Your memory is better than mine!