We picked up a fresh cargo the other day - mandarins and oranges. I took a crate as part payment and gorged myself on the first day and pulped and froze what I couldn't eat, because I remember the last time I took on board this stuff.
At first I had been delighted to have the fragrant crates in the hold, I love how they seem to store the sun in their skins, but quickly enough I couldn't get them offloaded soon enough. It is easy to forget that ripe means fresh. Which means "consume very soon". That's why jams and pickles used to be so big, because those gorgeous full globes will go off, and once they start it is a race to decay. Skin fungus, fermentation, even in the cold, even leaving the hold to get close to space cold - they'll turn fast.
We're landing in just hours now, and I know that the people here will go crazy for this delivery. There'll be enough good stuff in amongst it all to make it a lucrative run, and I've got enough snap-frozen pulp to keep scurvy away for a long while.
No comments:
Post a Comment