Tangelos -- "a crummy commercial"

We've all seen the NY Times ads every weekend recently for Honeybell Tangelos (if you haven't seen them, there's an ad every weekend for tangelos). According to the ad, ONLY AVAILABLE ONCE PER YEAR! Last week, while I was doing my grocery shopping at Fresh Direct, I saw, gasp, the famous tangelos (only the Minneola variety though). Being a victim to advertising, I instantly added them to my "cart" -- seriously, if I could only get them once per year, I wasn't going to miss my opportunity.

So before I get to my tasting, I'll digress into a bit of background on the tangelo. Doing a bit more research on Wikipedia (and the sources listed on Wikipedia's Tangelo entry) I found that the tangelo is a cross between a tangerine (that might be obvious from the name) and either a grapefruit or a pummelo. To digress further, a pummelo appears to be a strain of grapefruit and according to one site I found, may also go by the names: pamplemousse, pomelo, Bali lemon, Limau besar, and shaddock. They also tend to have a bell shape, which aids in peeling. Anyways, after learning a bit more about what tangelos are, it occurred to me that this may be one of the world's most perfect foods (well, it's no blueberry, but hear me out).

Grapefruits are a good source of lycopene (also found in tomatoes and even more so in cooked tomatoes) but have a drawback of "increasing the bioavailability" of medicines. Tangerines/oranges are obviously a great source of Vitamin C, they also have some powerful flavonoids that are antioxidant and antimutigenic. When the two were crossed it appears that the issue with the "bioavailability" of the grapefruit is no longer an issue (although I really wouldn't take my word for it). Holy cow, it's a citrus miracle!

So on to the tasting...

I peeled my Minneola with great anticipation, although it wasn't the "dream to peel" as advertised. I took my first bite. Huh, I thought...tastes like an orange. So much for the "sweet" and "in a class by themselves" citrus treat. My first response, was similar to Ralphie's in "A Christmas Story" when he got his decoder pin from Little Orphan Annie -- "...a crummy commercial..."
Now, I do like oranges, so all was not lost, but still, come on, what's all the hype? I must be missing something. It was like buying Sunny D and realizing that the unique blend of 5 citrus fruits really didn't add up to anything all that great (in fact, I think Sunny D is citrus fruit gone bad) Perhaps it was because I didn't get to try the Honeybell variety of the tangelos. Maybe next year...

Here's the recipe section, but I don't have a recipe for you today, just some ideas
I would, however, recommend using these for a vinaigrette, the oil you add helps release the lycopene from grapefruits (not sure how) in your body. I think that citrus vinaigrettes are great on fennel salads/cole slaw (add some granny smith apples too, yum!), or even better as a marinade or sauce for fish. And don't forget to use the zest, its even better for you, it has limonene (it stimulates our "antioxidant detoxification enzyme system" and helps prevent the growth of tumors, and both of those sound pretty darn good to me).

So I would recommend to keep eating your citrus, and if you're bored of regular oranges or clementines by now, try a tangelo, it'll taste exactly the same, but you'll feel exotic.