Fresh Squoze Orange Juice (and Lewis Grizzard)

Fresh tangerines and juice. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

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The name Lewis Grizzard probably doesn't mean much to readers from outside of Georgia these days, but in his lifetime he was the most popular writer in my home state and throughout the Southeast. He was only 47 when he died of complications from heart surgery in 1994, but produced 25 books of Southern humor, mostly culled from his Atlanta Journal columns.
 
Grizzard was a master of the one-liner, many of which became his book titles  - "Don't Bend Over in the Garden, Granny, Don't You Know Them Taters Got Eyes," "My Daddy was  Pistol and I'm a Son of a Gun," "Shoot Low Boys, They're Ridin' Shetland Ponies," "When My Love Returns from the Ladies Room, Will I be Too Old to Care?" and "Elvis is Dead and I Don't Feels So Good Myself."

He was of a certain breed of Southern male true to his post-war generation. He was a good ol' boy faithful to his almost-alma mater, the University of Georgia, and a bit of a misogynist. Even in his heyday in the 1980s, his opinions on women seemed crazy outdated. Maybe that's why he was married four times. Maybe what's crazy is that a lot of female readers loved him anyway. You see, Lewis Grizzard was most of all a mama's boy, disparaging his ex-wives in his columns, but always putting his mama on a pedestal. After she passed, he collected those columns in a book titled "Don't Forget to Call Your Momma - I Wish I Could Call Mine." (a line that my mama reminds me was borrowed from Bear Bryant)

Lewis' mama babied her little boy, making him breakfast with fresh-squoze orange juice every day. And that's what I think about when I see three-pound bags of tangerines on sale for 49 cents apiece - fresh-squoze orange juice for my little girls. I used my hand-juicer and squoze every last one of those luscious fruit for the sweetest juice for my babies' breakfast.

My eldest daughter, the read-a-holic, pulled Grizzard's "If Love Were Oil, I'd Be a Quart Low" off the shelf a few months ago and recounted all of Lewis' stories of love and marriage gone wrong. We laughed about the stories, and I told her it's ok to laugh, but be careful of Mama's Boys - they will break your heart.

Make your babies some fresh-squoze o.j. now that citrus is cheap and plentiful. I found the 49 cent bags of tangerines at Aldi, my favorite shop for produce deals. It's super-easy to juice fruit and you don't need expensive equipment, although electric juicers are nice to have around. 

Fresh Squoze Orange Juice (or other citrus)
 in memory of Lewis Grizzard

Fresh citrus such as oranges or tangerines, sliced in half

1. Using a juicer, either a hand-press or electric model, squeeze the fruit. If doing this by hand, be sure to pick out the seeds or use a sieve set over a bowl. Store in a sealed container in the fridge until ready to use. No need to add sugar or other sweetener - your kids will be amazed at how sweet fresh-squoze fruit can be.

To learn more about Lewis Grizzard, check out his official website, Lewis Grizzard.com.  . 


Are you a Grizzard fan? Did you ever have a chance to meet him ( I had a couple of encounters that I'll write about soon)? I often think about what he would say about politics and popular culture in the 21st century. Did your mama make fresh squoze juice for you? Let me know in the comments.

Roasted Apricots: Experiments

Given the choice, do you go with the juicy, ripe peach or the cottony apricot? I go for the peach every time, but that's not to say that I haven't been lured by the ultrasuede nubbits of cotton that are sold as apricots. They are only available in Georgia markets for a short time, hence their appeal. I've always thought I didn't get the right apricots, until I read the Atlanta Journal-Constitution food writer John Kessler's recent blog post about roasting apricots.

These apricots sounded luscious - velvety, rich and sweet, everything the fresh apricot is not, so I gave them a try. I bought two pounds of fresh apricots at the store, split them in half along the seam and popped out the stones. I heated the oven to 400 degrees and placed the halved apricots on a Silpat-lined baking sheet. I drizzled just a little bit of vegetable oil on the apricots and slid the pan into the oven. After about 45 minutes, the apricots were a gooey, but tasty mess. I scooped everything together and let it cool in a bowl while I decided how to use this delicious roasted apricot. The first thought was to use it in the almond gazpacho I made for the Salon Kitchen Challenge cold soup story. Almonds and apricots are a natural pairing. I pureed the apricots and used it as a garnish in the soup. The picture turned out kind of pretty.

But the taste was not so pretty. My daughter Laura put it this way: "you want it to taste good, but the soup and the apricot together are kind of yucky." So, to Plan B. When in doubt, make sorbet. I made a simple syrup with 1 cup sugar and 1 cup water, added the juice of half a lime, stirred in the apricot puree, let the mixture chill then poured it into the ice cream maker. Et viola, as my friends used to say, roasted apricot sorbet. It's quite tasty, if a bit sweet, next time I'll half the amount of sugar. I think it would be quite nice with a ginger cookie, or gingerbread, or some cinnamony, spicy kind of cake. Or maybe on a waffle. I hurried to take the picture - the ice cream was kind of soft serve to begin with, and I'm shooting on a 90 degree day.

Text and images © Lucy Mercer, 2010.