Marmalade

I love marmalade.


Sweet, bitter, sour.    Complex.


On croissants.  On biscuits.  On ice cream.



This is citrus season.  As soon as I have buds on my meyer lemon tree, I know it's time to hit the organic produce section and start making marmalade and lemon pickles.   [Pickle recipe soon!]

This year, I made a mixed citrus marmalade - grapefruit, tangelos, oranges, meyer lemons.    I learned a few neat tricks from Food in Jars - go check out her post.    She does a great step-by-step.  I love her idea of using the seeds and pith for pectin, but they add more bitter and K2 is not big on bitter, so I used pectin to thicken. 

Marmalade:

• 2 grapefruit
• 2 tangelos
• 2 oranges
• 4 meyer lemons
• 6 cups water
• 4 T Ball low sugar pectin
• 7 cups sugar
• 1/2 tsp salt

 
Note:  I only use organic citrus for marmalade.   I don't want to eat pesticides.

Wash your fruit.   Use a vegetable peeler to get the zest off, then stack the zest and cut it into tiny ribbons.   Yes, it takes a while.   Keep thinking about the lovely marmalade that you'll be eating in a few hours.  Set the naked fruit aside. 

Put all the zest into a pot with the 6 cups of water and boil it.   Keep it at an active boil until the zest is cooked into a uniform color and tender.   It takes a while.   You'll be happily occupied with the next step.

Supreme the fruit.  Start by cutting the top and bottom off [so it will not roll on the table].   Now, take a sharp knife and cut the pith off from around the outside surface of the fruit.   I start near the north pole, and cut the pith off the surface, down to the equator and then down to the bottom of the fruit.   Does that make sense?  

Then I turn the fruit on its side and slice it in three big rounds.    Now, the fruit sections will come out much more easily - especially the grapefruit.   Pull out all of the fruit, leaving the pith and membranes.   Don't worry if it's messy and some of the fruit falls apart.    It'll fall apart anyway when it's cooking.    Pitch the pith and membranes.   Compost it or feed it to the chickens. 

Remember the zest happily boiling away?   Check it.   When it's ready, add your fruit and the pectin.   Stir the pectin in quickly.   Then heat the whole thing to boiling.   Boil it hard for at least one full minute.

Add the sugar and salt and return it to a hard boil.    Boil it hard for at least a minute.   Since fruit size and juiciness vary a lot, you may want to test to see if it has jelled enough.  Drop a small spoonful on a cold plate.   Wait a bit and push it with your finger or a spoon.   It should make big wrinkles or clumps.   If you don't think it's ready, then boil it for a while longer.

Note:  The salt is to help cut the bitter.   Grapefruit zest is more bitter than orange zest. 

Want the recipe for this Marmalade and a whole lot of other terrific jam recipes?   Check out my ebook:  A Simple Jar of Jam  at www.rurification.etsy.com.   You can preview the book by clicking the link on the sidebar.  Every purchase helps support this site.  Thank you!

Nelly Novelty Yarn

I've been playing around with the yarn.    I decided some of them were lonely and needed to hang out together more. 

Et voila!   A yarn masterpiece.  

I thought you might enjoy getting a sneak peak.

 We're calling it Nelly Novelty.   We have limited quantities of several colors.   Here are a few of the warmer colors.

There's a lot of color action going on in these skeins.   They are not for the faint of heart.

Here are a few of the cooler colors. 

Each skein is 150 yds - enough to do a generous scarf or a midsize shawl.   Use size 17 or 19 needles so there's plenty of room for the mohair to bloom.




We'll be introducing it at the Fiber Event at Greencastle, Indiana on April 20, 2012.  

Email me if you want to purchase some early.

Minestrone

All summer long, I can dozens of quarts of tomatoes and squash.   We call it tomasqua.  We use it to make tomato sauces and soups and all sorts of wonderful things. 

Last week, I used it to make this lovely minestrone. 

I like minestrone.    A lot. 

The recipe I'm going to give you is not very exact in some places.  And it makes a lot.  It's OK to be all loosey-goosey with the proportions.  It will be delicious anyway. 

Minestrone

• 1 onion
• many cloves of garlic
• a couple of tablespoons of oil and/or butter

• 1 quart of tomasqua + 1 pint of tomatoes   OR
• 2 cans tomatoes + 1 medium summer squash chopped

• 4 cups chicken stock
• 1 can garbanzos
• 1 can white beans
• some dried basil
• some dried oregano
• dash pepper
• dash salt
• dash sugar

Peel the onion and garlic.  Chop finely and saute in the oil/butter until transparent.   Really transparent.  Add the rest of the ingredients and simmer for several hours.    

Notes:  

• You can add carrots if you want to.   I always forget.  
• It's usually better the next day.   

Gravel

We use a lot of gravel.   Tons of it, every year.   We call our favorite hauling guy - Quincy May of May's Hauling - to bring us a load of #11 gravel or sand when we need more.  [I can never remember what size, but Quincy always does.]

We just used the last of our pile when we put in the strawberry beds a couple of weeks ago, and we needed more.    Time to call Quincy. 

The problem is that our pile is up a little hill.  The hill is mostly dirt and even though we've put some big gravel on it, it can still get pretty soft.   And, this is Indiana, where things stay soft for a long time and it takes ages for 'soft' to dry into 'brick'.  So, there are only two times a year when we can get a dump truck up there:  Winter when it's frozen hard and summer when it's dried out.     

This is winter, but it's warm, so it's still soft.  

We've been waiting and waiting and waiting for it to get cold enough and stay cold long enough for the hill to be hard enough to get a dump truck load of a gravel to the top without getting stuck or leaving huge ruts.  [Been there, done that, no fun] 

It was finally really cold for a few days and nights in a row, so Quincy brought me 6.5 tons of gravel.

Now I can dig more drainage around the back of the veg garden.  

Spinning

This is my spinning wheel.   I love it.

It's an Ashford Traveller, double drive, single treadle.  

I bought this wheel in 1990.  We finished it with tung oil and I love the glow. 

I bought a sterling silver orifice hook for it a few years ago.   You can just see it hanging from the tension knob by a blue ribbon. That orifice hook makes me happy.






 I've spun some nice yarn on this wheel. 

This weekend I'm teaching a spinning class at White Violet Center at St. Mary of the Woods College, just outside Terre Haute, Indiana.     The girls and I are headed up there this afternoon.   It's one of our favorite places to be.