Upside-Down Pear

The theme of today’s Is My Blog Burning is the color orange.

What is more orange than the eponymous fruit?

I had some small Valencia oranges in my fruit bowl, left over from the lunches we pack for work. They’d been around for a few weeks and looked hard and dry, but inside they were brimming with intense, sweet juice. The zest and juice were shockingly orange, so orange that the honey I mixed them with seemed pale, so orange that the soy sauce I added next turned amber.

The orange scent drifted out of the kitchen into the living room and lingered.

I brushed the mixture on a duck and popped it into the oven.

Waited. Took it out and brushed it again. Waited. Took it out and brushed it one final time. Waited.

Took it out and let it rest, then used my kitchen shears to quarter it.

I reduced the remaining mixture to a lovely syrupy consistency, and served it all up with snow peas and fried rice. And the living room still smells of orange…darkened now, roasted and deep.