Day 176

Sour Orange: After finishing today's new food, I've realized that I should avoid most things labeled "sour." Well, let me first explain how I came to find today's post. While I was out doing a couple errands yesterday with the GF, she suggested stopping by the Cobb County Farmer's Market. We were headed in that direction already, and she said that she'd previously seen it on the way to work. I'd never heard of it, but I was willing to stop by and see what it was all about. The market itself wasn't that great - kind of a like a BHFM lite, with a fairly limited selection compared to other markets in the area. However, I did manage to find a couple interesting things, one of which was this fruit labeled as a "sour orange." As my readers know, I have a fairly low tolerance for anything sour, but at $0.99/lb, it wasn't going to hurt to try these.

I decided to give this one a shot this afternoon, so I sliced it in half and gave it an inspection. The outer skin looked like a standard orange, but had some dark spotting on it that I wasn't familiar with. It was also much thicker than expected, and it took a bit of sawing with my paring knife to get through it (or maybe my knife is getting dull, who knows). The flesh looked like most oranges, but was studded with lots of small seeds.

Ok, time to taste. After peeling off a wedge and popping in my mouth, I was instantly taken aback by the overwhelming sourness. I tried chewing it for a few seconds, but all I could taste was the sour, nothing else. It was like almost like eating a lemon wedge. In the end, it was too much for me to take, and I ended up spitting it in the garbage. That doesn't happen very often, and I think the last time that happened was when I tried jackfruit. Needless to say, I don't think I'll be finishing the rest of it.

I later found out that sour orange (also called "bitter orange") is used frequently in herbal medicines, perfumes and marmalades. It doesn't appear that it's eaten by itself that often, and after tasting its sourness, I can see why.