Day 141

Blood Orange: Today's blog entry is one of my purchases from Whole Foods on Ponce yesterday. I only managed to find a couple things there, but their produce section yielded a pretty cool discovery: blood orange. I've always wondered how blood oranges are different from traditional varieties, so I was eager to take one of these home to try. The outer appearance wasn't any different from a regular orange, but I suspected the interior would be a different story.

I decided to give it a try for a snack tonight, and I was pretty surprised when I sliced the orange in half. The flesh didn't look much different than what I'm used to, maybe a little pinker, but there was definitely a bloody-looking juice leaking from in between each section. It was creepy, to say the least, but I wasn't about to not eat it. I cut it into wedges and tried a piece, and it was much more tart than a traditional orange. It reminded me of a cross between a grapefruit and an orange, with less sweetness than I expected. Tasty, but I think I prefer navel or valencias to these.

I'm glad I tried blood orange, but I'm not sure why these would be preferred over others. I've seen blood orange as an ingredient on plenty of menus, so maybe someone out there could explain why/when they're more desirable?