Streetside orange peels

If not for the newspaper, I would have walked right by.

Perhaps a thrifty vendor at the nearby Thewet market had plans for sundried orange peels — something more subtle than orange chicken, I trust. As with other such sightings, though, the nature of those plans, and the reason that not every peel got page one treatment, no one was around to explain.

Streetside orange peels
Th. Samsen, near the Thewet market, Bangkok

Comments

[Zvi Kedem]

When I was a child in Poland there very few types of fruit available from outside the country. For example, I only had 1 thin slice of banana the whole time I lived in Poland and this was when my class visited a botanical garden.

Oranges, however, were somewhat available. Interestingly, if we turned in some weight of nicely cut dried peels, we would get the same weight in fresh oranges.

The peels were then used to produce chocolate covered orange peels. So it seems that the peels were move valuable than the flesh.

[www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=709991094]

At our Chinese restaurant, we dessicate orange peels on paper all the time. The best way to do this is via sunlight; although the local Health Dept. frowns on any foodstuffs staying outdoors for any amount of time. So a breezy area indoors, on newspaper, is the best way. Sadly, the oranges in the U.S. that we get (navel, not juice oranges) for serving at meal's end are covered with carnauba wax or artificial waxes and/or resins (to keep them from drying) so the oranges have to be washed and rinsed thoroughly before the peels can be dried (indeed for use in Orange-flavor beef and Orange chicken).

Perhaps the peels you saw that weren't enjoying a cushy ride on the paper had been blown off the paper by the wind.

[Dave Cook]

If those chocolate-covered orange peels were produced for export, I'd like to imagine that I might have enjoyed some of the fruits of your labors, Zvi! As for orange-flavored beef, and chicken, too, I'll confess a longstanding fondness for both dishes, especially on a cool evening such as this.