My intention was to buy a box of California navel oranges and then buy a box from Texas to make a comparison. However, there must have been a conspiracy to keep me from buying Texas fruit by sending me so many from California.:confused3:
Actually, several years ago, my wife and I were in California and bought some navel oranges right at the orange grove. They were so good, I decided to buy some from both CA and TX. I will still buy from the Texas growers, but not before Christmas. They'll still have plenty of oranges in the valley in January when I finally get rid of all the ones I have.
THE GREAT ORANGE CONSPIRACY IS REAL!
. . . Just kiddin'.
If this weren't so funny, I might really be mad. All I wanted was some darn Texas Navel Oranges. . .grrr! I looked online for a company that ships oranges. One of the biggest was Pittman & Davis out of Harlingen. Here's a link to their website where they describe their
Texas Navel Oranges. Notice just to the right and under the photo it says, "
Because of the climate oranges are available in Texas all year although the peak season for navel oranges is November through early May. During August and September the market tends to slow down although it is still possible to find an abundant supply of navel oranges in some places throughout the United States. Texas is only one of the four states that grows and harvests the oranges that are shipped to various states on both the east and west coasts." Does that or does it not sound like they ship navel oranges all year around?
So, after Brandi beat me up so badly
about not buying Texas fruit, I was sure gonna try to support my fellow Texans. Before Christmas, I ordered a half-bushel of Texas Navel Oranges from Pittman & Davis. Later, they sent me a link to their Tangelos and I decided to try a dozen of those also. Bear in mind that these two orders were
three weeks apart. Last week, the mail carrier rolled up to my door with both boxes of fruit. I never expected them to both arrive on the same day, but at least they arrived in good order and superb packaging. The boxes are extremely heavy cardboard and banded. Inside there is a double layer of foam for the tangelos and the oranges were all wrapped individually in tissue and padded so no bruising would occur. When I unwrapped the first orange, right away I noticed there was
no navel. You can't have a navel orange without a navel, can you? I peeled one and noticed the fruit was very light in color, just slightly more orange than a lemon. I put a section in my mouth to find out it was extremely sweet, but with very little orange taste and. . . A SEED! What?! Navel oranges are supposed to be seedless. In my two bushels of California Navels, not a single one had a seed. Right away, I decided they had screwed up and sent me Valencia oranges or some other type.
On the other hand, the tangelos are very tangy, almost slightly bitter and not sweet at all. Maybe that's the "tang" in tangelo. I'm not sure because these are my first...and probably last.
Not being one to let them get away with this without raising a protest, I went to their Facebook page and posted my disappointment. Right away they said if I would send them an email with the order number, they'd correct their mistake. So, I wrote an email describing how I had ordered California Navels and given them in Christmas fruit baskets. I also told them how I "took heat" for not buying Texas Navels and supporting Texans. I assured them that I wanted Texas Navel Oranges to make a comparison to the ones from California. I even told them that they didn't have to send me the whole 1/2 bushel, just a sample would do.
So I get a response yesterday that they are "so sorry" and will be shipping me a replacement order of
California Navels on February 5th. ARE YOU KIDDIN' ME?!! After all my explanation, they are sending me California Navels. So, this morning, I sent back another email and very nicely asked them if the California Navels was a typo. They responded that it was not a typo. Here is most of their response, "
All of November and December we do ship our Texas Navel Oranges, then we switch to the California Navels." Well, that's exactly what the website says. . .
NOT!!!
I went back to the FB page this morning and
posted that I was not only disappointed, but now I'm fed up.:thumbdown:
So Brandi, I really tried to do Texas Navels, but a bunch of dummies down in the Valley are messin' with my head. . . and pocketbook. What do you think?
EDIT: What makes this all worse, is that I saw 10 lb bags of beautiful big navel oranges in Sam's Club last week for $5.98 a bag. That works out to about 1/4 per lb for what I paid for my Pittman & Davis 'mystery' oranges.
