Orange you glad I didn't say banana?

Thank you grade school for my title line.

It has definitely been all about oranges in our house lately. Katy's trees are heavy laden with oranges and I have been taking full advantage of having a limitless supply of fresh, free, organic oranges at my disposal! I failed to take a picture of Katy actually picking the oranges, which is a shame because that would be the true start to this adventure.

The beginning of my orange spectacular. Fresh squeezed oj mixed with sparkling water and a little sugar. It's basically homemade San Pellegrino Aranciata (which by the way, is fantastic and highly recommended, if you're like me and love things that taste like real fruit)





I decided it would be fun to try making candied orange slices and peels. I get them dipped in chocolate as a treat when we go to a Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory and I loooooooove them. Mark is not a fan, so it was probably a mild form of torture to watch me make treats for days that he wouldn't want to eat. This is one of the few major divergences in our culinary perspectives. As I said, I love treats that taste like real fruit: sorbets, dried berries, lemon squares...the more fruit, the better. Mark tolerates fruit in his desserts, at best. Whenever we make English trifle (layers of white cake, custard, whipped cream and berries), I can see him gritting his teeth just a little each time I add a layer of strawberries/raspberries. You can almost hear him thinking, "This would be so much better if she left off that stupid fruit)

I know it's not terribly nice to post pictures of food you can't taste, but I promised I'd post pictures of my great orange adventure. The basic gist for both of these recipes is to boil the slices/peels in a simple syrup (equal parts water and sugar) and then dry them out. The syrup saturates the fruit leaving you with a dense, concentrated orangy confection. Then I dipped everything in dark chocolate, because chocolate makes everything better :)

The orange slices didn't start out my favorite, but after a couple extra days in the fridge, the texture got really nice and chewy.



The orange peels...I was worried that no one else would appreciate them and that I was the only crazy who liked eating orange peels, but they were a huge success. I brought most of them to church to prevent me from eating them all, thinking everyone would bravely try one and give the rest back, but I came home empty handed. :)



After all that, I STILL have oranges sitting in that bowl and I think if I ask Mark one more time if he'd like some fresh squeezed orange juice, he's going to scream!

In other (briefer) updates:

Me, 25 weeks, hanging by the pool. If I look a little swollen in that picture, well, at 80 plus degrees, I apparently turn into a human water balloon. I am definitely getting bigger, my stomach kind of...popped this week. Baby apparently was not happy with the amount of space allotted him. He is getting bigger and stronger by the week. Mark has felt him kick for weeks, but wasn't ever all that impressed by it. The other morning he put his hand on my stomach just as Baby started his morning calisthenics and when he kicked particularly hard, Mark jumped back a little in surprise with a "whoa!!!" Teach you to doubt your munchkin's strength!



Traditional St. Patty's Day feast. Corned beef, cabbage, potatoes and Irish soda bread. No artificially dyed green things here, sorry. (Listening to Mark's favorite (ha!) cd in the background, Putumayo records, Celtic Women of the World).