Double Batch

Day 362: Of all the preserves, jams and jellies I make, my very favourite is Cranberry-Orange Marmalade. I never make enough and always run out before cranberries come on the market the following year. When I discovered that the first crop had come in at the grocery store yesterday, I decided to seize the opportunity to get ahead of the game. I bought enough fruit for a double batch, and have been in the kitchen for the last six hours to produce a final yield of 22 half-pints.

Marmalade is rather time-consuming, but I've learned a few tricks which make preparing the fruit a little easier. Peeling oranges and lemons with a potato peeler provides delightfully thin shavings of rind and avoids adding too much of the bitter white citrus pith which can throw off the taste of the jam. I prefer a "shred" style marmalade with finely sliced pieces of peel rather than chunks, and this is easily accomplished by further cutting the strips of peel with a knife or scissors. The pith remaining on each orange or lemon is discarded along with seeds and as much membrane as it is possible to remove, and then the cleaned segments are put through a grinder. The peels, ground fruit and cranberries are cooked for half an hour with a little soda and water. Then sugar is added to the cooked fruit and processing continues as for any other jam.