How To Spot a Ripe, Sweet Navel Orange?

[sengsational]

Over in Romania, they have fruit trees all over the place...everywhere you look. I often reached up and grabbed me a snack.


But the point relating to recent posts on "recently fresh" is that everyone there makes a distilled beverage called "palinka" from their fruit that doesn't get eaten. It's apparently tradition to provide this beverage to guests, and so the airBnB included it, and pretty much every place I stayed offered it to me. The quality varied tremendously!

[Winemaker]

I forgot to include the fact that I also have 2 lime trees growing in 2 half wine barrels that I started by seed 12 years ago. I know it sounds far fetched but DW and I bought some limes at Kauii farmers market back in 2008 where we celebrated our 25th. This is the second year they have actually produced fruit. The limes vary in size from a quarter to ping pong ball size. They are extremely flavorful and thin skinned; and are just learning how/when to pick them. The wine barrels have casters on them so I can move them into my garage during the winters. The Florida Citrus Dept. gave me some tips as to ripeness, but have been unable to accurately use them. Color was a main tip, but my limes go from green to yellow real quick, but I have failed to notice any big difference in sweetness. Their fear that a yellow lime may go bitter, don't know if that is true with oranges. I know the oranges of my youth from Florida were always yellow, and was told that ethylene gas was used to "orange-ify" them, just like they use it on tomatoes and apples.