Juicy April: Pixie Month in Ojai

The citrus favorite is everywhere, from tours to gift baskets to drinks.

A STAR CITRUS, SO MANY WAYS: Typically when one speaks of many ways to approach a pixie tangerine, they're talking specifically, and solely, about recipes. You can juice it, throw it into a smoothie, use the peel as a garnish in an old-school cocktail, create an avocado/arugula/pixie salad (or a thousand other salads), or go the dessert tart route. But Ojai's "so many ways" takes on a different meaning, where the pixie is concerned, during the fourth month on the calendar. For April is Pixie Month in the grove-pretty Ventura County burg, and businesses from one end of Ojai to the other are honoring the brightly sweet staple with a host of deals, packages, and such.

THE IGUANA INNS... has a seasonal Pixie Gift Basket & Dining Package, which is all about a basket brimming with properties' "signature gourmet tangerine-flavored chocolates," some Casa Barranca wine, and, yes, real pixie tangerines, in addition to other treats. The Inns also offer in-room Pixie Tangerine Facials, an invigorating way to pep up should you be heading out for a tour of a citrus grove or other tangerine tie-in event, like a Cloud Climbers Jeep Tour, which can take you above a grove to give you a wider view of all of those leafy trees boasting all of those orange-y dots of goodness.

OTHER TO-DOS/GOODIES... around the town include a Pixie Fizz cocktail at Azu Restaurant, a pixie cooking demo at Ojai Valley Inn & Spa, a Pixie Cosmopolitan at Suzanne's Cuisine, and pixie muffins for Lavender Inn guests each morning. Truly, the list is on the lengthy side, and the pixie-perfect food and drink concoctions fill out the gamut and then some. There are also the classic grove-walking tours of Friends Ranches, too, still happening into April. Will you finally get your fill, citrus devotees? Maybe not, but you'll come dang close. Ojai goes all out each April for its star fruit. Shouldn't every town treat its famous foodstuff as well as the O does? And, at the same time, treat visitors and locals who love the foodstuff enough to plan an April outing around it? Yes and yes.

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