This morning at Whole Foods, they had Tarocco blood oranges from Italy in the produce section.

Heard of blood oranges, but not Taroccos. They’re grown in Sicily, have more vitamin C than any other orange grown in the world, and are mighty tasty in a cocktail.

Here’ the Taroccotini recipe I came up with: Shake on ice for 20 seconds 2 oz. of Taracco blood orange juice (about 1 whole orange), juice of half of a small lemon, 1 oz of sweetener (simple syrup or honey), 2 oz of Tito’s vodka, and a splash of Chambord. Pour into frozen martini glass.

Next week will be in the 60s in Denver. Need to clean the grill up and kick off the season by making these Pecan-Crusted Pork Pinwheels.

Did you know that the whole vampire myth in 18th century Europe was probably instigated by a disease called Pellegra, which was caused by niacin deficiency from a diet that was based solely on corn? I think there’s a joke here about the current vampire craze and our American diet based primarily on high fructose corn syrup and corn products, but I’m too tired to make it.

Only a week left for my for my homemade vanilla vodka to infuse. Using only the finest ingredients of course: Tito’s Handmade Vodka and organic Madagascar vanilla beans from Savoy Spice Shop. Now I have to come up with a drink recipe for it — I’m thinking something involving cherries.

I finally flipped my first over-easy egg successfully! On a sidenote: how come I’m just starting to watch Alton Brown after ignoring him all these years. I feel like some who’s just gotten an email address for the first time ever.

• Serious Eats pulled a recipe for Candied Pecans (SCD legal!) from Thomas Keller’s Ad Hoc at Home and I’m baking them up now. It’s a snowy, cold night and the house smells like candy shoppe.
• Jeffery Eugenides’ love-story anthology, My Mistress’s Sparrow is Dead — one of the best short story collections I’ve ever read — has so far introduced me to two remarkable authors I’ve never heard of before: David Bezmozgis (ordered Natasha) and Deborah Eisenberg (The Collected Stories comes out at the end of March).

This week there was a stream of gorgeous fall pastry photography on FriendFeed, and I got an itch to find a recipe for Pumpkin Spice Muffins that adhere to the SCD diet. I found a promising one right away and modified it a bit so that it was closer to my other successful muffin recipes.

First off, there’s supposed to be some shortage of canned pumpkin because of a bad crop in ’08? I couldn’t find canned pumpkin when I stopped at Sprouts on my way home, so instead I bought one of those adorable little sugar pumpkins they stock specifically for pie-making. I’ve never made my own fresh pumpkin, but it was easy. Not as easy as popping open a can of Libby’s, but it wasn’t difficult. Just takes about 45 minutes of baking time, a cookie sheet, some tin foil, and some cheese cloth to squeeze the extra water from the cooked pumpkin. I felt like a real Pilgrim!

I ate a spoonful of the orange mush I had created just, and it tasted like…drumroll…absolutely nothing. It tasted like the definition of pablum. Pumpkin pie is really all about the spices, not the pumpkin.