Blood Orange Citrus Sangria

If you follow me on Instagram or Twitter, you may have seen my posts about my recent blood orange windfall, which led to me making blood orange citrus sangria. A good friend of mine from Phoenix has a blood orange tree in her backyard (yep - I’m envious) that produced enthusiastically this year. She asked me if I wanted some of the blood oranges. My answer was an unequivocal yes. When the actual box showed up, I realized she wasn’t kidding around: some oranges was around 40 pounds of oranges. It was the best present, ever.

I spent all of New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day (and the day after New Years), making recipes with blood oranges. I love to can, preserve, and infuse. I made several blood orange marmalades (one of which uses blood orange citrus sangria as a key ingredient), multiple pints of blood oranges canned in a light syrup, orange-cello (limoncello, but with blood oranges), and blood oranges preserved in salt. Our kitchen smells like blood oranges and that’s ok with me. I’m already literally salivating over the thought of the preserved oranges with strawberries over shortcake (and whip cream and I’ve just gone to foodie heaven).

Blood orange citrus sangria also let me use up some of the other citrus I already had on hand. It’s still Meyer lemon season, and I’m definitely not done with the sweet fragrance of these lovely lemons. I also discovered mandarinquats at one of our local organic groceries. Mandarinquats are a hybrid of mandarin oranges and kumquats. They look like large kumquats and can be eaten whole - peel and all. They do have seeds, though, so be forewarned.

Blood Orange Citrus Sangria

The fruit in the foreground is the mandarinquat. I think these are an adorable fruit.

I love the many hues of citrus. The blood oranges are at the top.