Omorka's Lair

Pounds of Preserves

2017-07-29T09:28:22Z

I mentioned back in the spring that the marmalade thing had spread into trying out other forms of jam. This, um, this developed into a hobby for a while. And like all my hobbies, I got a little obsessive about it until I felt like I had it down. I currently have something like 80 jars of jam and/or marmalade in various flavors sitting on my dining room table, plus one jar of each flavor safely stored in the pantry. No regrets - I learned a lot making all that jam, all but one batch came out significantly better than store-bought, and I ended up with a number of flavors you can't buy in stores (I am particularly proud of the strawberry-fig and the peach-pecan-amaretto jams). But that's a lot of jam to either store or give away.

On the bright side, plain Greek yogurt with jam is a mighty tasty breakfast. So there's that.

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Sweet Spiced Marmalade

2016-02-10T05:59:13Z

( Long Recipe Behind The Cut )

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Preserves Preservation

2016-01-24T06:28:09Z

This satsuma marmalade recipe works quite well. In fact, it works when tripled, although the time it takes to reach 220 degrees in my gigantic stockpot was closer to two and a quarter hours than 30-45 minutes.

In other news, I now have two jars of marmalade, and the dear friends who rented a house with a satsuma tree in the backyard now have twelve. They did not learn how to make and can marmalade, however, because they (a) weren't here last night for the part that involved two hours of chopping tangerines and lemons, picking out a billion seeds, and shredding tangerine and lemon peels; and (b) managed to miss the three hours of stirring a boiling stockpot of dismembered satsumas and lemons with sugar because their car broke down. Given that part of the purpose of this exercise was to teach J. how to make marmalade, this was not entirely a success.

Oh, and since they weren't here when I was jarring and then boiling-water processing the jars, I had to buy a flat of jam jars from Bullseye, and they now have an extra flat. They have strongly hinted that they now expect me to teach them how to make fig preserves when their fig tree sets fruit. Oy.

At least I got my two jars and the leftover satsumas out of it. I am vaguely contemplating making a second (much smaller) batch with the leftover satsumas and steeping some cloves, cinnamon, and vanilla bean in it during the soaking process. If I do, though, it'll be a few days, as I now have to do everything else I'd planned to do today tomorrow.

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