The Fork: There’s a pixie tangerine?!

There’s a pixie tangerine and we weren’t informed?!

We grew up in an area of California that had this particularly cool gardening thing going on: If you put something in the ground, it grew. And so, Maman Fourchette got down to the business of growing certain types of fruit trees. We had a guava tree (no joke); a kumquat tree; an apple tree, a loquat tree (if you don’t know loquats, we don’t blame you, but know they’re amazing); a lemon tree or two; an apricot tree; and—most importantly—a tangerine tree that spread the sweet, glorious goodness of the gods down upon us for much of our childhood.

Normal tangerines

When it comes to shape and size

Who knew of pixies?

Haiku (and yes, that’s the plural) aside, imagine our surprise, then, when La Forkette arrived home from the shops with tiny tangerines that more closely resembled cuties or the dreaded clementine—nature’s most bogus-ass fruit.

“They’re called pixies,” she said.

“What magic is this?” we queried.

“It is but a tangerine, only a smaller tangerine, you absolute dunder-pate!” she shouted. “It hails from Ojai!”

“Well, thou art a ruinous butt!” we lobbed back, mustering our best Thersites.

Anyway, the point is: There are tiny tangerines called pixies, which got us thinking about tangerines, which got us thinking that we know precious little about tangerines other than we like them. Here’s what we’ve since learned: The tangerine is technically a Mandarin orange, but we prefer to think of it as an offshoot of the Mandarin orange. Tangerines have a better flavor, though.

The name originated from Tangier, Morocco. The legend goes that these little babies first made their way to the wider world through the port at Tangier, so that’s kind of cute. Where did clementines get their name? NO ONE CARES, DUDE!

We didn’t get tangerines in America until, like, the mid-19th century. All the other countries were laughing at us, too; eating their tangerines and gesturing lewdly by the time a visiting Italian consul brought some of those bad boys to the states via the port at New Orleans. Now, we weren’t there (though you can’t prove or disprove our age, or if we’re immortal), but apparently everyone liked ‘em so much the first tangerine trees in all the land were planted near the Italian consulate lo those many years ago. Even if that’s totally false, it’s a cute story about citrus-propelled friendships—kind of like every Sunny D commercial from the 1990s.

Orange liqueurs often include oil from tangerine skins. We just think that’s fun because they aren’t super-similar to oranges in flavor.

On average, Americans eat five pounds of tangerines a year. We’d have thought it was more than that because we ate five pounds of those little pixies in two days last week alone. Just saying.

And as for those loquats? Seems they bruise so easily they don’t ship well, plus they go bad pretty quickly after they’re picked. Le sigh. We pine, we perish—we assign scorn to the not-so-great state of California, where the loquats grow with ease and where supermodels laugh as they consume them. Fie and foo!

See? Sunny D, man. Sunny D. Look at all these extreme friends doing extreme friendship. We also like that this clip begins with an interstitial moment from Star Trek.

Also

• Didja get a look at the SFR Restaurant Directory that dropped this week? It’s gorgeous! That’s chef Jordan Isaacson of the restaurant Cafecito on the cover, but other cool food folks can be found inside, plus as many Santa Fe restaurants as we could fit in one place. If the team missed something, let ‘em know. They’re not perfect like all of yoooooouuuuuuuuuu!!!!!!
• The Santa Fe Foodies Facebook group seems to have gotten into the class/workshop game with the forthcoming Vegan Italian!-Cooking with Santa Fe Foodies class/workshop from noon-3 pm on Saturday, May 4. With only 10 seats available for the class with chef Kristin Griffin, we can’t speak on how many will be left by the time you read this, but let it spur you ever onward (by which we mean maybe join the group and keep an eye out in the future).
• Also on Saturday May 4, nonprofit Kitchen Angels follows up its Angels Night Out fundraiser from earlier this month with the Flowers, Fruit and Vegetables. Hungry for Art? event. “But how does it work, The Fork?!” you probably just shouted at your screen as bits of churro flew out of your mouth and through the air. Like so: More than 40 artists created pieces using the prompt “flowers, fruits and vegetables,” and they’ll show and sell ‘em all from 4-7 pm on Saturday, May 4 at Kitchen Angels HQ at 1222 Siler Road. All proceeds go to Kitchen Angels which, lest ye forget, delivers food to the homebound. Visit the site for more info.
• Just a little heads up to all your restaurant-goers? Local restaurants have started to open their patios again. We just think that’s cool, because spring in Santa Fe is nice. And we’re nice. And you’re nice.
• Calling all food truck owners who want to take their food trucks to a place where people like food trucks—have you heard tell of July’s Cowboy Food Truck Cookout Challenge at the Estancia Valley Ranch Rodeo? In short, it’s a showdown between food trucks, but it seems there are some caveats, which include that those who enter MUST use beef, have a potato/vegetable, bread of some kind and only use wood or charcoal. The top three winners get a cash prize, too! That’s all we know as of right now, but you can reach out to chairman@eastmountainrodeo.com for more info.
• If you wanna quaff some beers and also help out nonprofits dedicated to outdoor recreation and the environment and whatever, might we recommend Santa Fe Brewing Co.’s upcoming Spring Runoff party on Saturday, April 27? It’s out there at Brewing Co. HQ (35 Fire Place) and we can reportedly expect food and vendors and raffles (which we think would be a good name for a scrappy little dog) and activities. This is the third time they’ve done this thing, too, and all the bucks will go to local nonprofits (though there’s not a list on the site or anything, so maybe ask a worker while you’re out there?). Anyway, admission is a suggested donation, but give big, homies.

Taaaaaaaaaaaaaangerines.

More Tidbits

• In we-aren’t-sure-yet-what-to-feel-yet news, Amazon (being one of the most evil companies in the history of evil) has a new unlimited grocery subscription that benefits EBT users as well as those Amazon Prime jamokes. At $9.99 a month for Prime members, the service is currently available in 35 cities across the country and, where available, comes with things like unlimited one-hour delivery and/or 30-minute pickup—and there’s even a lower-cost option for low-income folks and SNAP users. Learn more here. As for why we are still wary? Well, we’ve been known to shop local whenever possible, so there’s that, plus, the further Amazon-i-fication of literally everything scares us in that is-the-world-turning-into-the-issue-of-Judge-Dredd-wherein-people-became-so-connected-to-their-devices-that-they-never-went-anywhere-again way. Still, some folks can’t leave the house for myriad reasons, and if something helps disabled people, is it all bad? Oh. Em. Gee. Is this why people read philosophy? We just thought they did it because they’re assholes.
• Sprite (the brand that brought us one of the greatest commercials of all time) has a new flavor dropping this summer. And though we could spend at least the next six paragraphs talking about how we think this or that, we’ll just tell you that it’s cherry lime and for some reason has been dubbed Sprite Chill. Sounds like those marketing clowns over at Coca-Cola need to chill. Shit.
• Longtime Fork Frenz (TM) know that Eater-dot-com is one of our favorite places to read about food, so it should come as no surprise that we enjoyed this recent piece crammed with brunch recipe recs from the Eater staff. This is how you have a nice-ass brunch, dang.
• Quick Q for all y’all as we exit this week’s edish (which is short for “edition,” and we use the term as a time-saver): We’ve been sticking to three non-local items per Fork. Is that working for you, or do you want to see more? Let us know at thefork@sfreporter.com.

A note about Rob DeWalt, the creator of The Fork

Though many of you know this current iteration of The Fork with us, The Fork-in-charge, we aren’t the first to helm this newsletter. Hell, we aren’t even the second. Or the third. And we aren’t even the best.

That honor goes to Rob DeWalt, a longtime Santa Fe arts and culture journalist who died in April, 2016, and who created The Fork at some point so long ago, folks don’t quite remember precisely when that happened; they just know they love it (as we assume you still do).

We struggled with mentioning DeWalt a couple weeks ago—closer to the anniversary of his untimely death—because we didn’t know if it would be too sad or strange, but we do know he had a major impact on at least some of the SFR staff, and we do know he was an important community member, so...well, we didn’t want to let the month of April close out without a salute.

We love doing The Fork, even when people yell at us and even when we worry that Rob would feel strange about someone like us carrying on part of his legacy. We know we crack wise. We know we swear. We know we ramble.

And we didn’t know him super-well, but we did know he liked to laugh and that’s kind of why we are the way we are. Frankly, we want to inform and entertain, but in this moment, we just want people to know that Rob meant a lot to folks from around here, and we know his friends and family miss him every day. That’s something we carry with us each and every week.

We don’t know if words make their way to those who’ve transcended to the next plane of existence but, if they do, let us just say: Thanks, Rob, for creating something we get to continue. It sincerely means a lot and we hope you’d at least get a chuckle out of the direction we’ve taken.

A totally scientific breakdown of The Fork’s correspondence

In this week’s print edition of SFR, it’s basically all food, baby. Find the 2024 Restaurant & Bar Directory, plus some killer stuff about local folks in food you simply need to know.

Number of Letters Received: 23

*The age we were when we realized we’d never heard the words “I love you” from someone we care about or “You’re OK” from a doctor.

Most Helpful Tip of the Week (a barely edited letter from a reader):

“Two thumbs up for The Ranch House! Whole family loves it. We have to drive quite a way to get there...but it is worth it.”

*We, too, must schlep fairly far for that sweet, sweet Ranch House, Nana K., but it totally IS worth it. Side note? We usually use this section to dunk on whatever reader irks us most, but we actually do think more people should go to The Ranch House (we know it can be pricy, but still)!

Actually Helpful Tip(s):

“The cemetery mentioned in your newsletter [as] ‘that one cemetery’ is the Santa Fe National Cemetery.”

*Brian R. dropping knowledge. We meant no disrespect, Brian—or anyone else—we just write like a jerk.

With enough tangerine citrus coursing through our veins that scurvy wouldn’t stand a chance,

The Fork