You Are My Sunshine

My deep down secret for loving a Montana winter has, in part, to do with members of the rue (Rutacae) family: Clementine, Dream navel, Valencia, Meyer, and Moro. This family does not live in my neighborhood but travels here, passing northern snowbirds as they migrate south. They wake me in the morning with sour, pungent juice. My desire to eat locally is thrown to the wind when the rue family appears on the scene.

The rues arrive in the frozen North Country packed in colorful boxes. There was a time when stickers that decorated the box ends became collectible. Peek inside to be greeted by a blaze of deep orange, yellow and almost red. The colors in the rue family define the sunny side of a rainbow.

Traveling back in time, way back to before the Roman Empire, the rue family found its way to Mediterranean soil through Asian traders. When Rome fell, the rue family disappeared. Vasco de Gama, remember him from dusty world history books? He found the rue family roots in India. He carried four roots to Portugal and from there the rue family thrived. Leave it to the Europeans to turn the rue family from medicine into a desirable sweet luscious fruit, all the rage!

Somewhere around 1565, rue family seeds made it to the settlement of St. Augustine via the Spaniards. By the time Florida became a U.S. territory in 1822, the landscape was dotted with rue family orchards, mostly navel, common and blood. California got into the act increasing the rue family genetics with the introduction of cousins, Meyer and Tangelo, for instance. My good friend, Clementine, has a wide range of varieties, all of which are mutations of the original mandarin. A family history worthy of a lifetime of ancestral research, for sure.

Drenched with the flavors of sun, I search for rue family delights, both familiar and exotic. I met a kumquat hedge during a walk in a park in northern California last winter. Immediately, I picked as many as possible storing the oblong juicy fruit in my pockets. Turning away from my companions, I shoved as many in my mouth as possible eating skins and all! It is impossible to restrain my love for the entirety of the rue family.

Each year my daughter brings a bag of the Meyer ‘girls’ picked fresh from the tree that shades her Oakland, California, porch. The Meyer part of the rue family are a cross between a tangerine and a lemon. These girls have smooth skins, tiny bearing, and delicious juicy flavor. Meyers lend themselves to being preserved to stick around for soups, salads, fish, and chicken. For my preserve recipe visit my blog.

Well, by now you must know who the rue family is? They are lemon, orange, Clementine (o, how sweet you are, dearest), lime, kumquat, mandarin and citron, all citrus. This family grows in the sun. They bring the sun to us in the North Country to keep us awake, fill our bodies with Vitamin C and provide a dream of warmer climes.

_You are my sunshine, my only sunshine.
You make me happy when skies are grey.
You’ll never know dear, how much I love you.
Please don’t take my sunshine away._