A Celebration of the Orange

Hands up, all who remember the often musty oranges we were given at Sunday School Christmas concerts, along with sticky hard candies and potentially toxic nuts, after we had paraded in our bathrobes as the Three Kings of Orient.

Despite that memory, I find this a fine time--indeed, the best time--of year for oranges.  The wonderful Cara Cara oranges (named for Hacienda de Cara Cara in Valencia, Venezuela) have just arrived, and Tom, the Emperor of Citrus Fruits at the Burnwood Drive IGA Marketplace, assures me that the Carmenesque blood oranges are but two weeks away.  I can hardly wait.

If you haven't discovered the Cara Cara orange, you will, I think, be surprised and delighted when you slice into it and find the richest, sunniest, most vibrant orange you have ever seen. This wondrous orange may be, it is posited, a cross of Washington and Brazilian varieties.  As for the blood, what gives it a distinctive deep burgundy color is the pigment anthocyanin, more common to flowers than to fruit.  

Some years ago, John McPhee wrote a book called, simply, "Oranges."  One reviewer wrote "You may come to the end of it and say to yourself, 'But I can't have read a whole book about oranges!'  But the chances are you will have done so...It's a delicious book."

And that's the news 'til now, from the produce section.  As soon as the bloods arrive, I will spend happy weeks squeezing together the juices of Cara Caras, bloods, and red grapefruit. Ambrosia!