Folks, it’s tangelo season.
All year round we may tell ourselves that other citrus fruits are fine – good, even – but the uncomfortable truth is that they all suck big shit compared to the mighty tangelo.
The tangelo is a freak fruit. What is it? No one knows. Is it a tangerine? A pomelo? A mandarin? A grapefruit? I don’t know, man. All I know it tastes like a big juicy kiss from the citrus gods.
In season for precisely three days a year, the tangelo is the thinking person’s fruit. The pathetic orange, in season all year round, pales in comparison to it. Any old idiot can have one at any time. There’s no sport in obtaining an orange. It is a pitiful, shameful fruit for impatient losers.
The tangelo, on the other hand, makes the eater wait.
No one knows when tangelo season is. It is one of the great fruit-based mysteries, and it changes every year without warning or reason. Though officially, the tangelo is “in season” in Australia from July until October, the reality is that they will only appear for a select few days at some point within that window, and sometimes outside of it.
There is no predicting when the tangelo will arrive in the supermarket produce section. They are simply there one day, having not been there the day before.
From the moment they appear you must cherish them. There is no shame in heaving armfuls of tangelos into your shopping cart; they may be gone again before you’ve reached the checkout, such is their fleeting nature.
Once home, the fun begins. In theory, the tangelo peels like a mandarin. In practice, it is a hand-to-hand battle between man and God’s most precious earthly gift. The tangelo does not give up its golden flesh easily, and there is no standard technique for stripping it bare. The eater must pit themselves against the fruit, one-on-one, with only those with steely resolve granted access to the juice within. It is a fruit that makes you earn its deliciousness.
And what a deliciousness that is. With a flavour profile akin to a grapefruit and a mandarin getting fucked up in a dive bar and rooting each other stupid in the loos, the tangelo greets all eaters with a truly absurd amount of sweet, sweet juice that bursts out of the flesh with each bite. Have y’all experienced the carnal joy of being squirted on by a citric gusher? Because if you haven’t, then buddy, put down a drop sheet and dive on in.
There is no challenger to the heights the tangelo achieves.
Lemons and limes are for bar drinks and tacos. Oranges are pathetic dipshits. The common mandarin is just an unripe hacky sack. And the less said about the sexless wonder tangerine the better.
The time is now, friends. Time’s a-wasting. Tangelos are in season right now. Go peel yourself off a rare treat.
