Fresh Squeezed Goodness

        

    We love to go to Grandma's in the winter time. It's great to get away from the chilly air and gray skies for a week or two. We usually like to visit in February, when the winter is the grayest and that's when the oranges are ripe. But, this morning, we found a few trees that were far enough along to squeeze orange juice

    I don't know how many acres of citrus grove Grandma has, but there's quite a bit. She has orange, grape fruit, and lemons mostly, with a few tangelos thrown in ... I think.

    Walking in the grove is very relaxing especially in the morning. The only thing I don't like is that it's FULL of jack rabbits and their hopping around in the dead leaves sounds like footsteps sometimes, which gets really eerie sometimes.

    There must be deer in the grove too, not just Jack Rabbits.

    I don't know how many oranges it takes to make a quart of juice, but we like picking and squeezing so much we never worry about numbers.

    For extra high ones we use an orange picker. It's a metal claw on the end of a stick with a basket so the fruit falls into it once it's picked. I actually think it's more fun to pick with the orange picker than by hand.

    Then we bring them inside and squeeze them.

Cut in Half

    Grandma has a electric orange juice squeezer so I've never actually tried squeezing by hand. The orange spike think in the middle revolves on it's own so all we have to do is press the orange down on top of it and watch the machine to all the work.

    This is what it looks like inside the orange juicer. There is lots of pulp so those of you you drink the pulpless stuff, you may not what to try squeezing your own. i don't mind the pulp too much, and I LOVE the taste ... so it all evens out nicely

   The orange halves end up looking all hollow by the time they've been squeezed. Grandma doesn't compost like we do at home so we just throw them in her garbage.

Fresh Squeezed Goodess

    Grandma cuts up some grape fruit to have with our orange juice and blender pancakes and...

    Breakfast is served! I'll have to remember to blog my Grandma's blender pancake recipe because it's my favorite pancake recipe ever!

Sun Before Storm

    On the way to freezing Rexburg Idaho where I'll be attending Brigham Young University Idaho for a while, my family stopped in at Grandma's house in Arizona.

   This college experience will be an extreme culture shock for me since I'm coming straight from a home schooled Mormish environment, but it's also going to be an extreme temperature shock. We're going from 20 degrees (home) to 65 degrees (Arizona) to 10 degrees (Idaho)! Ya!

I love this picture ... my sister is just photogenic, even if she's just a silhouette in this photo.

    I'm by this super large (and spiky) plant and I have no idea what kind it is. When we were younger we would play Indians in the orange grove and tear the fronds (is that what they're called?) off this giant bush/tree and circle our camp with them to ward of the imaginary wild animals.

   

 I decided to try something different ... everyone smiles for pictures :)

    I'm going to miss my family so much ... I love them like no one else in the world.