Cuties

WHAT A CUTIE

Are we getting to be a lazy consumer culture or what?

The California Citrus Marketing Board is currently promoting the “Cutie”, a relatively new variety of mandarin orange that is touted for its extremely thin and easy to remove skin. (The logo shows the fruit zippered up into its peel like a little tracksuit.)

Call us silly, but we thought mandarin oranges were already easy to peel. Yet not nearly so easy as the Cutie, a sweet orange/clementine cross, which also boasts the virtues of being seedless as well as extra sweet and juicy.  So too is the marketing. Stickers cover the fruit with slogans such as: “kiss a Cutie” or “I ? Cuties”.

The board chose the moniker for the North American market because of the fruit’s diminutive proportions (about the size of a ping pong ball), but it has long been popular in Japanese under the name mikan.

Cuties are so small you can peel n' pop them into your mouth whole, which also makes them somewhat addictive. Plus the natural vitamin C/potassium kick is happily guilt free. But you may want to slow it down a little -- the recent failure of the California citrus crop means the price at the checkout till isn’t tiny at all.

You’ll be able to find the fruit from November through April at Asian grocers such as T&T, H Mart, and of course, the mega-box stores such as Costco and "Whole Paycheck".