My First Marmalade Experience

My mother was a great "Domestic Engineer" when I was growing up. She was at great cooking, baking, decorating, housekeeping and all of the other tiring aspects of choosing to stay at home. But when I told my mother that I was starting to join the canning revolution - she snorted in disbelief. Or at least that's is what I imagined what she did when she saw that post and questioned me on it in an email.

Why would a working girl have time to make jam?

This is a good point. I guess eventually you are going to make a choice of what you want to make from scratch with the limited time that is available on the weekends. Sometimes I'll make a loaf of bread (Thank you Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes Cookbook), Sometimes I'll make a roast and sometimes I'll experiment with jams and marmalade. Last year I started make quick skillet type jams with the fruit I had leftover from the farmer's market. They were so delicious. This year I knew I wanted a pantry full of homemade jams, jellies, curds and marmalade. I also want to find a way to can my tomato sauce so I could have hostess gifts and little thoughtful gifts for those who needed meals or just needed cheering up.

Then my husband got me this for Christmas (yes mother it's ANOTHER cookbook - ok so I've gone a little overboard)

The Blue Chair Cookbook is an amazing cookbook that feels like it's around 10 lbs of recipes for jams, jellies and marmalade recipes - BY SEASON...

So I pushed away my urge to use some of my frozen strawberries in order to skip to the spring recipes and decided that I would make the Pink Grapefruit Marmalade as my first step. I also wanted to give it away for Valentine's presents to my friends. Get it? Pink... (crickets, crickets....)

Let me just cut to the chase. It turned out wonderful and I loved the process of waiting until the marmalade jelled. Now I know what it looks like when it almost reaches that point. But the best part of the process what the idea that they author had about sterilizing jars in the oven. Love this idea because the whole reason I had never canned yet was the whole mess of boiling the jars. In the process she outlines in the book you do the following:

Put clean jars and tops in a 250 degree oven on a jelly roll pan for 30 minutes. Remove them and add the jelly, jam or marmalade. Wipe the rim of the jar with a damp cloth (I used a clean paper towel). Put the lids on and put the jars back in the oven for another 15 minutes. When you remove them from the oven and as they start to cool all the tops will pop and seal. If it doesn't then put it in the refrigerator and use within a week. Seems pretty easy to me.

The moral of this tale is if you have any interest in some wonderful jam, jelly or marmalade recipes you can't go wrong by getting this book. It's inspirational and oh so helpful.