Valencia Oranges

Last weekend, Rafa took us to his family's citrus grove in Algemia - outside Valencia. We picked oranges, tangerines, and grapefruit. Hey, where do you think Valencia oranges come from ... Valencia, California or Valencia, Spain?

The answer is both - kind of. Valencia oranges are a specific type of juicy oranges developed by an orange farmer in California. He named them after Valencia, Spain because the city was famous for its orange trees. (I've since learned that his farm was in an area of California later named Orange County. Orange County is southeast of Los Angeles and Valencia, California is northwest of Los Angeles.)

Anyway, back to the orange grove. Every time I looked at Matthew, he was eating oranges - though I'm pretty sure he picked a few more than he ate. Maria was taking pictures and playing with Rafa's daughter, Maria. Rafa was showing Elena how to "bowl" with oranges and grapefruit down an irrigation canal. Bronson was inside the trees hiding from the invading Moors or invading Christians (depending on what era in history he was playing).

After we picked as many oranges and grapefruit as our many hands (and bags and shoping carts) could carry, we flew a kite in a nearby soccer field.

Since moving to Valencia, we've become orange snobs. However, our love for Valencia oranges was not love at first bite. In the city of Valencia, there are orange trees on almost every street and in many of the parks. We tried a few of those "street oranges" when we first arrived. Cough - sputter - gag! They tasted like rotten lemons.

Then, Sara's student gave us fresh oranges from the orange groves last spring. Sara gave us fresh lemons from her mother's lemon tree. Ana Pilar and Tony gave us a whole bag of the biggest and juiciest oranges. Francesco's customer gave us fresh clementine oranges. Loli's father made a concerted effort to go and pick a few bags of oranges right before I came over ... so they would be fresh! Rafa brought us mountains of oranges and lemons and grapefruit from his family's grove. THANK YOU!!!

Now, we don't really like store bought oranges anymore and we have a hard time choking down anything but fresh squeezed orange juice. We prefer to get our oranges from the fruit store or directly from the orange tree!