At first blush, the idea seemed OK. It was even appeeling. Er, appealing.

When the Jayhawks were picked for the Orange Bowl, my wife and I were looking for some sort of theme for the bowl-watching party we were planning for a few friends.

Jana suggested we serve only foods that included oranges.

Aside from eating oranges and drinking orange juice (and, I suppose, the occasional orange sherbet), I'll admit I haven't eaten many dishes through the years that have oranges as ingredients.

I bragged to one of our friends, Patrick, that I have a recipe for orange julius that tastes just like the concoction you get at the mall.

"That," he responded, "would be the problem."

I could tell this would be a tough crowd, and a tough idea to pull off. So I decided to call some orange experts.

Jill Davie is known as the "lemon lady." She's a spokeswoman for Sunkist, and she's also a Los Angeles chef who recently competed on "The Next Iron Chef."

I bounced our idea off of her.

"I'd stick with one thing," she responded. "I'm going to go out on a limb and say that might be a little redundant in flavor. When I think of the Orange Bowl, I'd have to say it conjures up thoughts of kegs and brats and things of that sort."

Davie says orange flavor goes best with poultry, fish and pork, and not so much with red meats. How strong an orange flavor you end up with depends on which part of the orange you use.

"Orange is definitely a distinctive flavor," she said. "If you use the juice, it's not as strong as using the zest."

One of Davie's favorite orange-related recipes is an orange romesco that includes olive oil, almonds, garlic, paprika and orange zest. She also uses oranges in salads instead of tomatoes when tomatoes are out of season.

But as far as my Orange Bowl party, she recommended another orange food: Doritos.

"And maybe you could just throw a couple of oranges around," she suggested.

OK. Jana and I didn't get a lot of support from Davie. But she is known as the "lemon lady," so maybe I need someone with more allegiances to the orange.

So I phoned Deborah Tukua, author of "Citrus Morning, Noon & Night." She lives in central Tennessee, but she grew up in south Florida, so she knows her oranges.

I don't mention the party idea at first. I want to ease her into it.

Tukua is full of orange trivia. New York City residents, she said, consume 64 million gallons of orange juice a year. And oranges are the second most popular flavor around the world, after chocolate. Also, oranges should be stored in the refrigerator, but not in plastic bags.

Tukua has recipes for oranges in salads, casseroles, soups, breads and desserts.

She especially likes to use a little orange zest in meatloaf to give it a big of a zing. She also uses orange marmalade in an Asian pork roast she makes in a slow cooker.

"It's not always the dominant food item," she said. "In some of the recipes it's just an accent."

So our Orange Bowl party might have hope after all. I pitched the idea to Tukua.

She predicted this reaction from our guests: "Oh, no. Not oranges again. OK, you made your point, all right?"

So even the woman who suggests you eat citrus "morning, noon and night" thinks this party might be orange overload.

The experts say this is a bad idea, but that hasn't stopped us from doing things before. I think we'll go ahead with it anyway.

Maybe we should have some orange roughy on hand, just in case the flavor of actual oranges turns people off.

Jana and I are huge KU football fans. We couldn't be happier that the Hawks are in the Orange Bowl, unless they had been in the National Championship Game.

I can't help but think, though, that this party would have been a heckuva lot easier to plan had KU been invited to the PapaJohns.com Bowl.