ORANGES

Here at Carrington we have a Continental breakfast and sit wherever we want in the dining area with friends and find the long counter lined up with large platters of sliced oranges, apples, grapefruit neatly sectioned, several varieties of melons, half a dozen varieties of cold cereals as well as hot cereal, brown sugar, milk, tea and coffee, a bowl of yogurt and half a dozen fruit drinks.

I saw and tasted my first orange when I was five years old, and continued to enjoy an orange once a year at Christmas time until it was time to leave home and attend high school in the nearest city since high school was not taught in small rural schools. The ladies in our farming district gathered at the home of someone with a sewing machine, cut out and sewed red and green net see-through bags for nuts and candy to be handed out after the Christmas program. At the top of the bag both an apple and orange were tucked in and placed under a Christmas tree to pass out after the Christmas Concert. Santa in his familiar uniform called out the names tags of the children along with other small gifts. I was delighted to receive a round pin cushion. I think Alice Bennett knew I liked to sew little things with a needle and thread and wrapped one up in pretty paper for my both my sister and I. Some of the young folks stayed to dance until midnight.

But the most exciting thing about oranges I would learn about later. Oranges contain limonene and helps block lung and breast cancers and plenty of vitamin C that works against those winter colds and flu. In a study at Duke University Medical Center, laboratory animals given a diet of limonene showed a 70 percent reduction of cancerous tumours. Among the tumours that remained, they shrank to 20 per cent to be less than half their former size. The way that limonene acts on tumour cells or lesions is really unique says Michael Gould, Ph.D., Professor of Oncology at the University of Wisconsin Medical School. Essentially, the compound gets cancer cells to self destruct. It assists them in their own suicide.