EVER CRAVE A SPECIFIC food for days, even weeks?
Lately, I’ve craved oranges.
Now that’s a healthy alternative to the chips and chocolate I sometimes often desire.
While I can’t pinpoint the exact reasons for my orange obsession, I can theorize. This has been a long and snowy winter in Minnesota. When I see and feel and taste an orange, I temporarily escape to a warm, sunny climate like Florida or California. Seriously. If you live in Minnesota, you know exactly what I mean.
And then there’s the color. Orange. It’s sunny, bright, uplifting. After way too many wake-up-in-the-dark and dark-by-five-o’clock days, I need an orb of cheerfulness to stave off a potential case of Seasonal Affective Disorder. Orange is, after all, opposite blue the blues on the color wheel.
Oranges also quench my seemingly endless thirst. That thirst, I concluded, is related to my dried out skin which is caused by the furnace running too much and drying out the air during these endless winter days. True or not, a juicy orange hits the spot.
About now you’re probably thinking, what the heck, is this an advertisement for the California Citrus Growers Association or the Florida Orange Growers?
No, rather these are the musings of a winter-weary Minnesotan who tastes summer in an orange.
P.S. I will accept any and all free shipments of oranges to my snow-encased Faribault home. Thank you.
© Copyright 2011 Audrey Kletscher Helbling
I craved citrus during pregnancy. They are also in season right now and we picked up a few pounds of clementines yesterday. So sweet and juicy, I think I might have to have some later today.
-Jocelyn
Citrus is an interesting, and healthy, food to crave during pregnancy. Enjoy your clementine. We just picked up more oranges on Sunday…