Marmalade Recipe Roundup

It's Februrary and that means it's marmalade season.   I love marmalade.  Nothing is as beautiful this time of year as a jar of citrusy sunshine.

I love marmalade on toast.   Also, on pancakes.  Also, on Blueberry Steel Cut Oats with yogurt.  Also, on brownies.   Also, on ice cream.    Also, on brownies with ice cream.



I love marmalade!  

Here are a few tips and recipes to get you started.   

• Marmalade Tools
• Mixed Fruit Marmalade
• Four Fruit Marmalade
• Rhubarb Marmalade
• Honey Vanilla Orange Marmalade
• Blood Orange Marmalade
• Old Fashioned, Southern Style Lemon Pumpkin Pickle [Marmalade]
• Chocolate Orange Marmalade

And once you have the jam made, here are some fabulous things you can do with it!

Orange Marmalade Cranberry Jammy Oatcakes

Eric's Jam Bars

Blintzes


Want the recipe for these Marmalades 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!

Marmalade Tools

It's that time of year.   Time to raid the grocery stores of all that gorgeous citrus and make some marmalade.

I scored a nice selection of citrus this year and decided that I'd make a batch of  Four Fruit Marmalade to start things off.  [Recipes coming soon.]

Last year I tried Food in Jars' method of making marmalade.  She supremes her fruit.   This year I decided to skip the supreme-ing and just section the fruit with a grapefruit spoon.

Honestly, I liked the spoon better.   It was just as fast, too.   [The one in the pic is an old silver one I picked up at an antique mall for cheap.  I can never seem to get the tarnish all the way off.]

Which brings me to the rest of the tools I use when I make marmalade:  A sharp knife and a couple of zesters.

Because marmalade is all about the zest. 

I found a new zester this year.  The long one with the red handle in the pic above zests beautifully and quickly.  The zest is small, but not too small.

I like it a lot.  It's a KitchenAid medium grater.

This thing is really, really sharp.

Really sharp.  So be careful!

For longer zest, I use this little thing.  It's a 2 in 1 lemon zester.  There are bunch of different brands out there.

It takes longer to use but I like the longer confetti zest that I get with this.

Hold the fruit firmly in one hand.   Drag the zester along the fruit with the other, using your thumb for support on the back of the fruit.   This way you can get the job done pretty efficiently.

The larger blade to the side of the zester [pic above] is for when you want really big peels, like if you were candying lemon peel or something like that.

Once you've mastered these, then you'll end up with this. [KitchenAid medium grater]

And this. [2 in1 lemon zester.]

And then you're ready to make marmalade.






Want the recipe for 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!

Moving Earth....Again.

We spend a significant amount of energy digging.   Every time I think we're done, we're not.   Way back in January, we dug yet more garden beds up in the veg garden.   And if you'll recall, we have clay.  Yep.  Loads of clay.

In general, I like to dig.   It's a full body workout and when you're done, you've got a great hole that you can put a gravel path in, or plant stuff in,  or put a fire pit in, or pour concrete in.    We're doing that last one again now.  

Here are my preferred tools for the task.    For small digging,  I like a good trowel.  Not the kind that bends under pressure. 

Bending under pressure is bad.  [Another life lesson brought to you by Rurification]

And for jobs that require moving even more dirt, here is our selection of shovels.  

I split my first shovel last week.   As in,  the metal tip was split in two from digging through roots and hauling tons of gravel, etc.

We're hard on shovels so we get good ones with fiberglass handles.  Around here, a very good shovel is a reasonably inexpensive investment for what it'll do for you.   Eric prefers the regular long handled shovels.  My shovels are the shorter ones with the handle parallel to the ground.  The girls like those, too.   They're easier for short people to handle.  The green ones have a nice wide edge for your foot at the top of the blade.   You're less likely to injure yourself with one of these.   They're a bit heavy, so K2 prefers the lighter, yellow one.  

Notice on the far left a flat bladed spade for scraping things up.   Very handy for some jobs.  Also notice the rake in the middle.   Rakes are great for moving dirt and that rake is one of my best loved tools in the garden.

Recently we started a project that involves moving a lot more dirt than we typically move at one time. These new holes are 50' x 30" x 30"  or so.   Deeper in some places.   

Not exactly shovel type of holes.

Trust me.

So we rented a bigger digger.

This is me running a Bobcat back hoe.   The first three hours, we could have dug with a shovel faster than I could dig with that thing, but then I got the hang of it and after I'd spent 15 hours using it, I was moving some serious dirt with a lot of finesse.

Finesse is important when you're using heavy equipment.   Finesse is what allows you to put the dug dirt right into the wheel barrow to be hauled away instead of knocking the wheelbarrow over with the machine. [Did that.]  Finesse is what allows you to not break the window you're working right next to. [Didn't do that, thank heaven!]  Finesse allows you to lift the ginormous rock that some nitwit buried next to the front door and move it to exactly where you want it to go.  [Totally did that.  Got a standing ovation from the family.]   Finesse is good.

It will take at least another day and a half to dig the other holes, but I'm much better at it now and will hopefully be able to get the job done pretty efficiently.    Efficient is good.  It's one of the things I really really loved about the back hoe. 

And here's another thing I noticed.    When I'm digging with a shovel,  I get pretty dirty.   But when I dig with the back hoe, I stay a lot cleaner.   Clean is good.   Yet another reason that I want one of these babies for Christmas.   

A girl can wish.

Hive Tools

There are a few handy tools to have when you start beekeeping.   Here's our list in order of importance:

1.  Protective clothing.   The less afraid of being stung you are, the more comfortable you'll be with the bees.  We didn't use any of it during the installation, but once those bees are at home in a hive, they'll defend it.   You don't want any surprises. 

2.  A good smoker.    Don't skimp.

3.  A good hive tool for prying the top off and loosening the frames out of the supers.   Bees glue everything together and seal things up with propolis, which is a glue they make out of tree sap.   It works.   You need a strong, thin prybar of some sort to get things apart.

4.  A brush.   A nice, soft synthetic one.   Don't use a natural bristle brush made out of animal products.  Bees hate those.    The brush will help you get all the bees off the frames so they don't accidentally get squished. 

5.  A frame support.  These hang off the side of the hive when you're working a hive, so you can take frames out of the supers and place them in the support and not on the ground.  This is very handy, but a clean plastic tub might work just as well. 

6.  A feeder.   There are loads of ways to feed your bees.  These are handy, but not necessary.

Garden Helps

I am not a natural vegetable grower.   I grow weeds well.   I grow herbs well.  I grow some flowers well.   Until 2 years ago, I didn't grow vegetables. [My husband did - a few tomatoes....].    Two years ago, we figured out that our property really did have an altitude problem.    We're in a hollow.  The gardens are in the bottom of the hollow an on terraces up the south end.   The house and studio sit above them.    Our little hollow was collecting the cold air and frosting things out in bizarre ways.   Also, we live in the clay and limestone capital of the word [and I am not kidding].   Drainage was a problem, even on the terraces.

After we built the studio, up behind the house, we realized that the area next to it could be drained and then we could build raised beds full of sand and manure and grow veggies there.    It was backbreaking, but it worked.  I'll post pictures when it's not covered with snow.  

Once we had the beds ready, it was time to plant.   I had a lot to learn about vegetables and luckily our local library has a lot of resources.    Here is my favorite book on growing vegetables:  The Kitchen Garden, by Sylvia Thompson.  [Link below]   Just the right balance of chemistry, lore, basic information and hand-holding.    I actually bought it.

My other favorite tool these days is Clyde's Garden Planner, which is a handy-dandy little slide-rule sort of unit that lets you select which garden area you're in according to when your last frost is, and then tells you when to start planting seeds indoors and outdoors for all sorts of veggies.    On the back, you can see when to plant your fall veggies [radishes, greens...] by when your first frost is.    Here's a picture of mine.  It gets just as much use as my gloves.