Border security with zest

Bringing fruits and vegetables can be complicated... Fresh fruits and vegetables can carry plant pests or diseases into the United States.

- U.S. Department of Homeland Security

Some time ago, a car-load of geeks decided on a trip to the home of the "Northwest's largest value mall" (Auburn, WA) to take in a special showing of... a made for TV movie. That story's elsewhere.

A 15-hour drive requires some serious planning, especially in the area of snack foods. A half-day with Twizzlers and Starburst sustenance will not end well. If history has taught us anything, it is that citrus is the way to go. Prevent scurvy--eat oranges.

One kilogram of oranges later, we're ready to rock and roll. We've also picked up a few other "healthy" snacks for the drive, but those were really incidental since we were more concerned with our "Seattle or Bust" t-shirts.

Not quite sure how the topic of appropriate border-crossing foods came up, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't from me. A keen little trick I learned from Dad is an ability to do an instant personality change around border security: he gets flustered; I get stupid.

I'm the guy that once attempted to have a debate with a border guard over the government's definition of plants versus cigars. I'm the guy Natalie has to remind to "just shut up!" when we get in the security lineup. I'm the guy that almost made a solid "flavour explosion" joke in LAX.

So, you must understand that I would never be the guy to bring up a discussion on whether oranges can go from Canada to the USA via the land border. (That's my way of absolving myself from what was to come).

Upon buying the aforementioned one kilo of orange-goodness, someone might have mentioned that oranges might not be safe to cross the border.

"Could we eat them all?" Possibly, but that's a lot of oranges to consume in one day. Scurvy's always a credible threat, but... that's a lot of oranges.

At this point, someone else recalled a relevant orange anecdote. It seems that the last time they crossed from the USA to Canada, the topic of oranges in the car did come up. Fortunately, nice Mr. Border Guard said "No worries, kind Canadians, it is just the orange peel that is restricted. If you simply peel those oranges, we'd be happy to let you through with that tasty snack."

"Thank you, Mr. Border Guard."

And so, we were very confident that oranges would not become a problem, and we didn't give it a second thought until we started to near the border.

"Hey, how many oranges do we have left?"

"Um, like, nearly all of them?"

"What? Hasn't anyone been eating those?"

"Were you?"

"No."

"Well..."

Of course, we now know that peels are clearly verboten, so we had only one solution. Rather than gorge ourselves on fruit, we would peel all one kilo of oranges. Fortunately, we had a giant Ziploc bag for just that possibily.

So, we set Vanessa on the task of peeling.

Forty-five minutes later, we had:

One garbage bag full of peels
Ten fingers stained (permanently?) orange
One car filled with a zesty orange flavour
One LARGE clear plastic bag filled with peeled oranges

I've since learned one interesting thing about oranges: when together, they naturally juice themselves. Amazing, really. With just the help of gravity, a bit of light friction and the help of an enclosed plastic bag, they quickly begin creating a pool of fresh juice.

Tasty.

Of course, we'd never want to pull anything over on nice Mr. Border Guard, so we made sure to store our one kilo baggy of juicing oranges between Natalie and myself at the front of the car. He won't be able to miss these!

As the sun sets, we near the border and start to get excited. We're getting closer to our destination! This trip is so cool!

We pull up to the booth where nice Mr. Border Guard is standing and I roll down my window.

The man instantly wrinkles his nose as he's met with a blast of hot, orange air from our car. I'm smiling like an idiot.

"Are those oranges?" He points to the one kilo bag of oranges that seem to be squeezing themselves to a pulpy mess.

"Oh yes! We peeled them!" I reply and I hold up the bag for his inspection. I might as well have held up a gun and proudly proclaimed we'd left the bullets at home.

"I'll have to take those and throw them out." There was a lack of humour and good nature in his voice and face. I'd seen this before.

"But we peeled them..."

No dice. I quickly resigned myself that this was only going to end with me handing over that sweet, juicy bag of orange. I briefly contemplated asking if I could eat them all before we crossed into the States.

I guess the peeling rule isn't as consistently applied as we thought. And so ended our plan for healthy snacks and staving off scurvy. Our trip back was fed with energy drinks and chips.