Shortly after the new year began, I used an on-line coupon that we had purchased to sign us up for a fresh fruit & vegetable delivery from GREEN B.E.A.N. delivery. Every other week, we receive a "small" bin filled with an assortment of organic fruits & vegetables. We started the delivery on a trial basis, but were soon won over by the variety & the quality of the produce we received. In short, I love this business and have been highly impressed with everything that we have gotten. I love that each week there is going to be something different in our bin, often items that I would not normally think to choose at the grocery store. I highly recommend this service to anyone who can get it!
In the dark of winter, I think that people love the sunniness of citrus fruit. Our produce delivery has brought us a wide assortment of lemons, limes, grapefruits & oranges. Several weeks ago, I had also bought a small crate of clementines for the family. Personally, I am not a fan of citrus. I don't hate it or anything, but for whatever reason aside from cooking I am not one to grab citrus as a snack. As the weeks have passed, the collection of citrus in our fridge has grown & grown. Obviously, the rest of the family is as likely to grab an afternoon orange as I am. Soon, our entire fruit bin was filled. Fearing that all that good fruit would go to waste, I knew that I needed to find a use for it and fast. I decided that I could make the best of it by making a marmalade. I had never before attempted to make any kind of jelly, but my mother is practically a jelly chef. We never had store bought jelly when I was a kid, so I kind of feel like making jelly is in my genes. I had the eating jelly part down pat, I just had to hope that the making jelly part could be mastered as easily!
I already felt comfortable with canning after two years of succesfully canning apple products, but I was still nervous about making this marmalade. I found a few recipes on-line and in a canning book, and asked my mom for her advice, too. Of course, in the end I did what I always do and mish-mashed all the information I found to do my own thing. I grated some peel from most of the citrus instead of using pieces of rind (the peel of the clementine was too soft to grate). The peeling process was awful by the end because my fingers were so sore and the citrus juice got into all the sore places. I used my Magic Bullet juicer to separate the juice from the pith and citrus' connective tissue as it seemed a thousand times easier than all the cutting that the recipes I found wanted to do. I did strain the juice before I started cooking it. Really the prep was the hardest thing because actually making the marmalade was as easy as boiling juice, sugar & pectin. As I cooked the jelly, I prepared my jars & lids for canning. I love that this part of the process is becoming so routine. All the jars set soon after pulling them from their hot water bath and by the next day, I was able to tilt the jars without the marmalade inside moving around, so I am hopeful that the marmalade jelled properly, too. All my citrus & hard work produced 7 jars of marmalade. I look forward to trying my hand at making more jelly in the future!
No comments:
Post a Comment