Orange picking in our own little patch of Sicily, as a matter of fact!

Since we first set foot in our Sicily house, we’ve admired the many gorgeous fruit trees in our yard (and we always seem to find more tucked away). There are apples, lemons, pomegranates, plums, plus a ton of kiwis. But the prettiest of them all are the orange trees in our yard.

Except since we’ve gotten here, that’s about all they’ve been to us. Pretty. Every time we’ve tried the fruit, it’s been kind of gross. Until yesterday! On a whim, Chris grabbed one of the mandarin oranges off the tree and to our immense surprise, it was delicious. The regular oranges? A little tart, but tasty as well. Go figure! I wonder if we’ve just been picking them at the wrong time, or if perhaps last year was a bad season for them. Either way, we got to picking some of our oranges this weekend.

We’ve been meaning to take the kids on a orange-picking adventure here in Sicily sometime, but somehow have missed out on various excursions for one reason or another. This was much easier than going to a farm, ha!

Afterwards the kids decided to wash their fruit …

And then the juicing could begin.

I wouldn’t really describe these as blood oranges, but a couple had some tinges of red! Lovely.

This juicer leaves a lot of pulp, which the kids don’t love. So now we run it through a mesh strainer.

We were all pleased with the results! Especially Fiona, it seems.

Before and after.

We also tried one of these weird lemons that are so common here in Sicily. I’m not actually sure what they are called (which is sad after more than a year here in Sicily), but our landlord tells me you are supposed to put them in salad.

The outer rind (not sure you are actually supposed to eat it or what?) was weirdly over-sweet.

The inside? Not so much.

We may have further research to do on how to eat these!