Marmalade day

Back home now, reveling in the fragrant familiarity. Walking into my house yesterday, I noticed that it still has a hint of the sweet new wood scent which it started out with, 10 years ago. And a touch of smoke, of course, from the fire having recently been fed.

I brought organic oranges home with me, though not the right kind. Not Seville oranges, because when I was shopping I hadn’t known about them. Just regular organic navel oranges, along with some pectin and some cute little jars. But it was the lots-of-sugar type of pectin, and for seven oranges many recipes call for something like 7 or 8 cups of sugar. I used about one and a half cups of sugar, because I was craving a deep, dark marmalade, slightly bitter. I casually decided to just use the orange’s own pectin, which might have been fine, but I didn’t have cheesecloth for the peel to go into. So just as casually, I decided that the pulp of the orange must also have pectin, and I pitched the white peel-lining into the compost and forged onwards. My end results are two small jars of dark, delicious orange sauce, a tossed-up kitchen, and (after more research) a much clearer understanding of how pectin works.

I won’t be able to try again until Bob goes to the city next week, and comes home with Seville oranges and real cheesecloth. Oranges aren’t exactly local-sourced items, but I figure if we’re going to hit some kind of Peak Oil disruption of our warm-climate fruit supply, it’s a good idea to stock up on home-made marmalade ahead of time!

In the course of my marmalade research, I discovered an endearing UK blog called Cottage Smallholder. (“Stumbling self-sufficiency in a small space”.) The couple who write it, Fiona and Danny, are knowledgeable and eloquent about food: growing it, preparing it, putting it up. Their blog is enviably fitted out with separate pages dedicated to their favorite books, artwork, current harvest, as well as a lively forum. Most commenters are also from England, and I am purely charmed just by the British diction they all use.

And, in the course of reading Fiona’s post on marmalade, I discovered that in Cumbria there is an annual Marmalade Festival. I feel that I will sleep happier tonight, knowing that every year there are people who put on a marmalade festival. Maybe in a few years I’ll have a good enough product to submit to their marmalade contest.