Cold Morning with Fruit and Jars

It's about 15-20F outside with a wind chill of below zero. That's just a little to cold to take the dog for a long walk. Sorry Annie! What I need is some more coffee and some stuff simmering on the stove. When I know I have a good excuse to stay inside I am gonna cook, pickle, can, dry or vacuum pack anything I can. It's just in my nature! Today I stared at one of those wooden boxes of clementines on the counter and said "what am I gonna do with these things?". I know my wife will eventually eat them all but who knows when that would happen and I wanted to cook something. I had 4 more jars on the porch that needed to be filled with something and those clementines were in my crosshairs. I was thinking of making a marmelade. After all, people all over the world are harvesting citrus this time of year and making marmelade so I thought that was as good enough reason as any. Sorry honey we can buy more! By the way, apologies about the iPhone quality it's the only camera I own for silly step-by-step pictures. I started first by getting the pot of water to sterelize the jar(s). I have an electric stove that takes a wile to heat water to a boil. Then I started slicing the clementines. I wasn't too careful about it because I know they're gonna cook for a long time and get very soft and break up easily. After they were all sliced I put them in a pot with cold water and set them on the stove to bring to a boil. Then did that two more times. I had my sugar weighed out previously, after weighing the fruit, then added that to the pot with the fruit and a little more water to cover. After bringing it to a simmer I looked for any scum or forth to come to the surface and removed it. Then just simmered it to the right consistency. The short explanation is as follows (the most basic way of expressing it):

• First weight the fruit so you know how much sugar to use.











• Then slice the fruit. Use the pulp and skins.






• Blanch them in cold water three(3) times, starting with cold each time you change it.
  
  

• After the third blanch, add an equal amount of sugar, by weight, to the fruit and enough water to just cover.




• Simmer, skimming as froth comes to the surface, until it is of marmalade consitency.

I always use the plate method to test if is the right consistency. [Just get a plate in the fridge and when you think your marmelade is close then drop a little on the cold plate. Tilt the plate to the side and see if the marmelade sets. Also you'll be looking for the surface to make a "wrinkle" when it flows. After it's the correct consistency hot pack into jars and process.]

I also had a couple of fruit preserves in the fridge that I thought I'd have eaten by now. One was a raspberry jam and the other was from a foraged berry I picked in November called Autumn Olives. So I threw them in the microwave to get them to hot pack temperature and put
them into sterilized jars. I had enough of each to fill 1 jar each plus a little extra so I combined the teo jams together to make another full jar and processed them all. Very cool! These will probably trun into gifts for when I visit someones house or for our new neighbors but I had fun, kept busy, practiced my canning and made some room inthe refridgerator. That sounds like a pretty good way to spend a cold January morning to me.