Phillip Phillips #AtoZChallenge #blogboost

Long before Orlando, Florida became a theme park destination, the Orlando area grew a lot of oranges.   To the south, past the theme parks, they still do.  

Here, to get you thirsty for some "OJ", is an orange juice commercial from the 1950's, featuring New York Giants football player (and late husband of NBC's Kathie Lee Gifford) Frank Gifford.

We can thank a number of individuals for introducing and developing the citrus industry in Florida, including a man by the name of Phillip Phillips. (No, not the same Phillip Phillips who won American Idol).

Dr. Phillip Phillips, who died in 1959, was a medical doctor, a philanthropist, and a businessman, and, most of all, a man who became rich off of citrus. Phillips first came to Florida in 1894.  His first venture failed when a freeze wiped out his crops.  But, he didn't give up.

He owned thousands of acres of orange groves.  He developed several innovative ways of processing and packing orange juice, including developing the "flash pasteurization" process that took the metallic taste out of canned orange juice.

I remember a brand of canned orange juice called "Donald Duck"....oops, I just made a Disney reference again.

Orange Juice processing plant

If you are ever in the Lake Wales (south of Orlando) area, I recommend a visit to the Grove House of Florida's Natural juice.  You get to taste the fresh juice, and it is oh-so-good.  And it's free, too.

When I lived on the West Coast of Florida between 1974 and 1976, we would sometimes (if the wind was blowing right) smell the wonderful fragrance of orange trees in bloom.  I wonder how many of those groves were once owned by Dr. Philips.

Today, Dr. Phillips has a number of buildings in Orlando (an art center, a high school, and more)  named after him.  It turns out I was staying in a suburb of Orlando, population of around 11,000 . Dr. Phillips had purchased this land in 1905 and turned into orange groves. My pictures were really being taken in Dr. Phillips.

I'll end this post with a picture of Poinsettias growing outside a store in Dr. Phillips.

Considering that we got snow squalls yesterday where I live in upstate New York (and many people got much worse), you'll forgive me for Pining away for Florida.

Jelly #AtoZChallenge #Blogboost

How many of us come to Florida to see jelly and citrus candy being made?

Not too many of us, I bet, but that was one of the surprises we had in visiting Bok Gardens in Lake Wales, Florida.  At the gift shop, we saw these orange jelly like candies.  I said to myself "that would be a perfect gift" and I bought one.  It tasted so good we ended up going to the factory.

Davidson of Dundee still makes jelly, marmalade and candies the old fashioned way, as they have done since 1967 - in copper kettles.  No corn syrup.  Stirred with wooden paddles.  Recipes dating from the turn of the century - the 20th century, that is.

We were not able to take the factory tour but there were so many samples that we left floating on a citrus sugar cloud.  Honey bell oranges were for sale but we knew we'd be returning home on the Auto Train, and our car would be traveling in an unheated car.  We couldn't risk it.

It turns out that Davidson used to thrive on its location on the road to Florida's first theme park, Cypress Gardens (now closed, but the gardens part has been preserved as part of Legoland).  We saw Cypress Gardens back in the "day" (a post for another time).

And then there was the orange wine we bought at the Bok Tower gift shop, but that's a post for another day.


Day 11 of the Ultimate Blog Challenge #blogboost

"J" day on #AtoZChallenge.