Take a Bite of a Pixie

Several years ago, I made the mistake of telling my young daughters that I had brought home Pixies for us to eat. They gasped in horror. It was during their Peter Pan phase, and I had been spreading story-dust about the magical fairies and pixies who live with the flocks of wild parrots that inhabit the evergreen trees in the northeast corner of San Francisco. I had forgotten my lore about the little parrot saddles for the young pixies who can’t fly and the secret hiding places and tunnels under North Beach for all the magical creatures. Now, tears were starting to flow.

“No, no,” I said as I pulled out some fruit. “These Pixies are just tangerines.” They looked at them for a moment in wonder. “Do fairies and pixies help them grow?” one of my daughters asked. “They sure do. Let me tell you all about it.”

A magical family in California’s Ojai Valley is to be thanked for the majority of this week’s Pixie crop, fresh from Friend’s Ranch, just north of Ventura and east of Santa Barbara. Although the ranch employs many organic growing practices, Friend’s Pixies aren’t certified organic, so you’ll only find them in our conventional mixes.

In our organic mixes, you’ll see a wide variety of other juicy, delicious citrus offerings: West Coast organic cases feature blood oranges from Pauma Valley Citrus in Valley Center, CA, as well as Cara Caras from Homegrown Organic Farms in Porterville, CA; Southwest organic mixes include navel oranges and tangelos from McClendon’s Select in Peoria, AZ; Central organic cases will feature Minneola tangelos from Cousin’s Farm in Orange Cove, CA, and navel oranges from Sespe Creek Organics in Fillmore, CA; and back East, we’ll have organic Ruby Red grapefruit and Minneola tangelos from California. Check out our mix pages at fruitguys.com/mix and enter your zip code to find your region.

One medium-sized tangerine (about 90 grams) is only around 45 calories and contains about 40 percent of your vitamin C for the day while providing about 6 percent of your dietary fiber. That’s truly a magical creature.

Enjoy and be fruitful! – Chris Mittelstaedt chiefbanana@fruitguys.com