Marmalade Day

Yes, it's Marmalade Day. My last remaining jar of home made marmalade was eaten up well before Christmas so it was time for a new batch, and there's nothing better than home made on toast for breakfast. Commercial marmalade is far too sweet, so I like to make my own.  A little bit sour, with a Zing! that wakes me up in the morning.

8 bitter Seville oranges, 4 Meyer lemons, another sour lemon, and a sweet orange, 2 bags of sugar... chop, slice, soak, boil, stir, cool, and into the jars it goes.

What Rhymes with Orange?

Well, nothing rhymes with orange, or so they say, but you can make Marmalade with oranges, and that's exactly what I have been doing. An annual tradition for me. My cousin in Australia makes Marmalade every year too, we obviously have inherited the marmalade gene from our mums.

Six Seville Oranges, only available in the nearby grocery stores in January and February. The Sevilles are wrinkly and rather ugly and very bitter, and way more expensive than normal oranges, but they make terrific marmalade, so indispensable. 

Add two sweet navel oranges, and two juicy lemons. 

Squeeze all the juices out, remove the pips and the membranes, and chop the peel very thinly. For every cup of juice and peel, add 2 cups of filtered water, and soak overnight with the pips contained in a mash bag.

Boil until the peel is soft, add a cup of sugar for every cup of fruit mixture, boil some more and when it starts feeling thick and jellyish, pour into heated jars and seal.... voila! Marmalade!

Home made Marmalade on home made toast for breakfast, can't get any more delicious than that!!

Marmalade Season

At this time of year, I'm usually making a nuisance of myself by bothering the produce managers in the local grocery stores, looking for Seville Oranges.  Luckily, I found some for sale on my first visit to the big grocery store at the other end of town.... I don't usually shop there. They are small, wrinkled, bumpy, and very bitter oranges. Rather nasty looking. Why would anyone want them? Well.... they are absolutely essential to make lovely yummy home made Marmalade.

I bought 8 Sevilles (pretty pricey at $2:99 lb, oh well, I needed them) 2 lemons and 2 sweet navel oranges.  Squeeze out the juice and remove the pips and membranes, and slice the peel into thin strips.

For every cup of peel and juice, add 2.25 cups of water and soak overnight. Boil the pips and membranes in a separate container and strain out all the liquid... it's full of pectin to help the marmalade set.  Add the juice to the peel and then for every cup of fruit add 1 cup of sugar. Boil it up for 30 minutes or so. As I stirred it I could feel it get thicker and starting to set.

Stir for a while to cool it and to make sure the peel doesn't float, then it goes into jars that have been warming in the oven, pop the lids on, and let them cool. The jars all give a satisfying "pop" as the lids seal.

According to a Scottish legend, the creation of orange marmalade in Dundee occurred by accident. The legend tells of a ship carrying a cargo of oranges that broke down in the port, resulting in some ingenious locals making marmalade out of the cargo.

I could buy marmalade in the store, but it's always far too sweet, and doesn't have that tang that home made marmalade delivers. I'm looking forward to some on my toast at breakfast.

Olé! Mermelada!

January / February is the season for Seville oranges, those knobbly sour citrus fruits that are so necessary in making marmalade. They are hard to find, but I bought some really big juicy ones at our local Longos, the fancy new grocery store where everything costs a bit more than you'd expect. These oranges were grown in the USA although they carry the name of the city in Andalucia, Spain. Buying Seville oranges is the closest I'll come to Spain in the near future.
Of course, it's marmalade making time. I do enjoy a dollop of golden marmalade on my toast in the mornings.
I used 6 large Sevilles, 2 lemons and 1 sweet orange. First squeeze the juice out of the fruit, and remove the membranes and the seeds.... keep for later. Chop the orange and lemon rinds as thin as possible.

 Add water, and soak the fruit overnight, including the seeds and membranes in a net bag. Then boil it all up until the orange rind is cooked and soft.

Then for every 2 cups of fruit and juice, add 2 cups of sugar, and boil again for about 20 minutes, and it will start to gell. Take off the heat, stir for 10 minutes to cool, you don't want to break the jars, and to make sure the fruit doesn't all float at the top. Pour into sterilized hot jars, slap a lid on, and look forward to breakfast time.

A wonderful quote from Bob Hope:
"My folks were English. They were too poor to be British. I still have a bit of British in me. In fact, my blood type is solid marmalade."
I think mine is too.

Marmalade

What do you like to spread on your toast at breakfast time?
In my kitchen there's usually a selection of spreads to choose from: peanut butter, strawberry jam, honey, even that good old British standby Marmite, but my favourite is Marmalade.
But not that sweet sickly stuff that's lined up on the local supermarket shelves. I like my marmalade bitter with a tang of citrus, something with a punch to make sure I'm fully awake. And the only way to get it is to make it myself.

The bitter and rather ugly Seville oranges are only available at this time of year. I usually have to try 2 or 3 grocery stores before I find them, but this year they were in the first store I went to. Bonus! Teamed with a couple of lemons and sweet oranges, Marmalade Day 2017 got started.

Squeeze out the juice, separate the pulp and the pips, and cut the peel into thin strips. The pulp and the pips can be soaked and boiled to extract the pectin. For every cup of peel and juice, 2 cups of water was added, and then left to soak in my "jam bucket" overnight and then cooked until soft. Then sugar was added, and more cooking for at least 30 minutes until the marmalade reaches a jelly consistency.
Then it's poured into hot jars and we wait to see if it will gell. Even if it doesn't, it will taste yummy! Making marmalade is a pretty labour intensive process, but worth it IMHO!

The end result: enough marmalade to keep me and my family happy at breakfast for a long time. (Actually, the family doesn't like it as much as I do, so perhaps this is all for me!!!!!)

Marmalade and Art

I think I post about Marmalade every year, but in February the knobbly, very ugly and very sour Seville oranges appear in the local grocery store for a short time, and as soon as I see them, I feel compelled to make marmalade. I think it's in my blood, as Mum made marmalade every year.
I have a vivid memory of Mum trusting me to stir the marmalade while she had to go out for half an hour, and of course as a 13 year old I had better things to do, and when she came home, there was a distinct aroma of burnt marmalade.... I was in BIG trouble. Perhaps my annual venture into marmalade making is to atone for my past mistake.

Squeezing out the juice, removing the membranes and the seeds, and cutting up the orange and lemon peel gets harder work every year, and then standing at the stove stirring and stirring, and getting hotter and hotter.....

 .... but the result is totally worth it. These 9 jars contain 8 Seville oranges, 2 lemons, 1 navel orange, some filtered water and approximately 3kg of white sugar. Enough for a few gifts and to last me a year of breakfasts. And there's even some left over for tomorrow's toast. Mum would be so proud of me.

This week our Art Group were invited to exhibit 40 paintings at the Community Centre in the nearby town of  Ajax. The art will hang in the main entrance hall. We delivered our paintings and the art curator arranged them along the walls to be hung. Some were arranged by size and some by subject and some by colour. These three are on the main entrance wall, the middle picture is a delightful image of an old cement plant... soon to be demolished.... painted by my art friend V. Love that picture!

And at the Art Group session last week, we experimented with intuitive paintings. This involved setting blobs of runny watercolor on wet paper and squishing the colours together with crumpled tissue paper, or wax paper, or even using saran wrap, and letting it dry.

I used some bubble wrap and some netting from an onion bag to create different textures.

Then when it's dry, taking the covering off gently and seeing images in the interesting patterns left.

That was the hard part! I couldn't see much, no matter which way up I held the paper, but other people saw fish and a turtle and flowers.... I'm still waiting for the turtle to reveal itself to me!

Oh well, I can always cut them up to make pretty bookmarks!

Sunshine in a Jar

I love toast and marmalade with my morning coffee, but the marmalade sold here in Canada is far too sweet for my taste, so I make my own.
A dozen tough little Seville oranges, very bitter and only available in January/February, 3 or 4 lemons, a couple of sweet oranges and some white sugar. Remove the pips and the pith and cook separately, slice the peel really thinly, soak it all overnight in my special jam bucket, and then cook the peel until it's soft.

For every cup of fruit.... add one cup of sugar, and cook until it starts to gell. It's a long process, and you need most of the day, lots of patience and a sturdy stirring arm, but the result is worth it.

I had some for my breakfast this morning. And I'm planning on having some more tomorrow! Yummy.

On The Table #3

Well.... not really on the table, more like on the kitchen counter.
It's marmalade making time again.

This batch was made from 12 11-1/2 Seville oranges (one was squishy at one end), 4 lemons, water and 3.5 kg of sugar.
The bitter Seville oranges are only available at the end of January into February, and are the traditional ingredients for marmalade. I can't stand the very sweet sickly stuff that passes for marmalade in N American grocery stores. I like my marmalade to have a kick to it!

So you know what I'll be spreading on my toast in the morning.

Lady Marmalade

No, not the song... the breakfast spread!

It's annual marmalade making time at the Rook's Nest.
The Seville orange harvest is in at the local A&P so off I went. Bitter Sevilles are only available in February, and they make the very best marmalade. And they're very hard to find.

Add a couple of lemons and sweet oranges to the Sevilles, squeeze all the juice out and slice the peel very thin, saving the seeds and the membranes separately. Soak the juice and fruit overnight, adding twice as much water.

Simmer the fruit for 1-1/2 hours to soften the peel, and also boil the seeds and membranes separately to extract the pectin.... Mother Nature's natural gelling agent. Add the seed water to the fruit.
For every cup of fruit mixture, add 1 cup of sugar, and boil like mad for at least 20 minutes, until you feel the consistency get gloopy.
Take the marmalade off the heat and stir for 7 or 8 minutes to cool it slightly and to keep the peel distributed evenly through the mixture, then pour into clean warmed jars and seal.
As you can see, I couldn't resist.... had to sample some on a toasted English muffin for my lunch.

L-L-L-Lovely Lemon Lime Marmalade...

Take 2 big juicy lemons and about a dozen limes.... squeeze the juice out, separate the pips, and chop the peel in teeny weeny thin strips. Do all that tiresome soaking and boiling and adding the sugar and stirring over a hot stove until you are hot, fed up and bad tempered and everything you touch is sticky and the rest of the family wants to stay far far away.....

And this is the delectable result....

When you spread some of this delightful confection on your morning toast, a wonderful tart spicy lemon-lime aroma fills the air and your taste buds tingle in anticipation, and you take the first bite and wonder why you ever bought the sweet sickly stuff they sell in the supermarkets!

Next year I'm going to try making Ginger Marmalade for a change.

Mmmmm - Marmalade

Finally, after phoning at least six other grocery stores in the neighbourhood, I found Seville Oranges in our local supermarket. These bitter oranges are only available in Canada at this time of year, and make the very best marmalade. These probably come from California, not Seville! Lots of prep time required, cutting, slicing, squeezing, boiling, making the whole house smell of oranges.

But the finished product is worth it!

A welcome taste of sunshine in the depths of winter.

Next project is lemon/lime marmalade.... watch this space!