It’s funny how little things from our childhood stick with us into adulthood. For example, the way your Mom or Dad (or you) prepared an orange. Did they peel it or cut it? And was it cut into slices or sections? How thick or thin were they?
I tease my husband about his Mom’s penchant for doing all of the hard work when it came to fruits and vegetables. It wasn’t unusual for him to come home from highschool to find a plate of apple slices ready for him and his siblings. Until I bought an apple corer, I would joke that I had to section the fruit myself and feed it to him like he was a squirrel. He’s much more self-reliant now.
I recently purchased some naval oranges that were a little tougher than usual. I sliced the orange rather thinly like a bartender would do before pushing it onto the rim of a drink glass. I didn’t separate the slices. They stayed upright, held at the bottom by a bit of uncut rind. I enjoyed half while placing the other half on a plate for Derek with his breakfast. His response was, thanks so much – but what the hell was with that orange?
To me, it made perfect sense. You pull it apart and eat the fruit off the rind. Derek looked at it like it was a Rubik’s cube he was seeing for the first time. He nicely asked if it could be cut in sections next time, not slices. Or let’s just peel it like we always do.
It’s a little thing but even after almost eight years of marriage, it’s something we never knew about each other. As a kid, if I didn’t use the Tupperware orange peel starter, I sliced the orange like an Outback bloomin’ onion, something Derek had never seen, thought was weird and a lot of extra work to eat.