Citrus Marmalade

No longer am I out of marmalade. Marmalade, a fruit preserve made from the juice and peel of citrus fruits, is very easy and inexpensive to make at home yourself. I like to make mine from a combination of lemons and oranges, so I call it Citrus Marmalade. But, if you prefer, make orange marmalade, lime marmalade, grapefruit marmalade, or any combination of your choice. It's all good.

My favorite use for marmalade is as a flavoring for the yogurt that I make. I love the combination of the taste of the tangy, fresh yogurt and that sweet, slightly bitter flavor of marmalade. But, with nothing but empty jars on hand today, I was unfortunately out. No worries here though, because I had oranges and lemons on hand. From start to finish, this marmalade recipe makes up fast, so within thirty minutes from taking the pan out of my cupboard, I had two lovely jars of marmalade on hand once again.

Not liking the poor quality, rubbery, slightly pricey stuff they call marmalade that's available at the regular grocery store, and not wanting to shell out the big bucks to purchase one of those fancy jars at one of those fancy shops, I realized a long time ago that it's best just to make it myself. I recommend using only organically grown citrus fruits in order to avoid any nasty chemicals that might have been used on a non-organic orchard. Living in the Pacific Northwest, our climate is not warm enough to grow our own citrus fruits. If you reside in a climate where you can grow them yourself, lucky you. Here's my basic recipe.

Citrus Marmalade

1 Orange

1 Lemon

1/2 Cup Sugar

1/2 Cup Water

Wash the lemon and orange. Grate off just the colored portion of their peels and place the gratings in a large pan. Peel the pithy white layer off of the orange and lemon and discard. (I add that to my compost pail.) Slice, dice and chop the lemon and orange into small pieces.

Place the chopped fruit in the pan with the grated peel. Add the sugar, then the water and stir to blend.

Cook on high until the mixture comes to a steady boil. Lower the heat and continue cooking for ten minutes, stirring as it cooks. Citrus fruits contain plenty of their own natural pectin, so the mixture will begin to thicken as it cooks. To test to see if the marmalade has cooked to a thick enough consistency, remove the pan from the heat and spoon a small dab onto a cold plate. If the dab thickens, your marmalade is finished. If it is still too runny or a bit watery, return the pan to the heat and cook in five minute intervals, testing for thickness at the end of each interval. When your marmalade has reached the desired consistency, cool slightly and pour into jars.

Once this batch of marmalade was finished, I could hardly wait to try some in my yogurt. Wow, it really is exceptionally GOOD.

This recipe makes two jelly-sized jars of marmalade. Cover with a lid to keep for several weeks in the refrigerator. Double, triple, or more, this recipe to make larger quantities. If you make a larger quantity, place regular canning rings and lids on the jars and process them in a boiling water bath for 15 minutes. Once canned, marmalade will easily keep for up to one year. For a great gift idea, make a variety of citrus marmalades - orange, lemon, lime, grapefruit, or any combination of those fruits - and pack them in baskets or small boxes to give away.

Harvest Monday - April 25, 2011

The local news mentioned snow in our mountain passes and that we shouldn't be expecting it to warm up much here any time soon either. The weather guy went on to say that unless we get some sort of warming trend, which, by the way, turns out to be extremely doubtful, this month will most likely go down in our record books as the coldest April in recorded history. No wonder another Harvest Monday has rolled around and all that's available for harvest from my garden is over-wintered leeks, salad burnet and a few small snips of herbs.

My friend Dena was visiting and loves to cook, so made one of her favorite dishes with some of this week's harvest. It was fun having an opportunity to share my kitchen with an enthusiastic cook who loves being creative with recipes and ingredients. When I told her about Daphne's Harvest Monday project, she thought it sounded fun and welcomed the challenge.

She started with the leeks. First slicing, then frying them in bacon grease, this would not necessarily be a dish for someone with the goal of weight loss.

Then she sliced a red onion and cooked that up with the leek. Next, she sliced up a big pack of cheese and fruit sausages. Adding them to the pan, she cooked them through. Unfortunately, after reading the package label for the sausage, we discovered that they contained both pepper and paprika. With a severe allergy to capsicum, unfortunately, I would not able to even try this dish. She said she makes it all the time and absolutely loves it. I thought it smelled so good.

Having planned a picnic and hike at Tennant Lake and Hovander Homestead Park for lunch that day, she made up Salad Burnet Egg Salad for us to take. The cucumber flavor of the salad burnet was a wonderful addition to the egg salad. You can read all about our picnic and hike here - Really Rose Blog - Tennant Lake and Hovander Homestead.

With the intention of making Fresh Herbed Whole Crackers, we visited my garden and snipped a few assorted herbs - sage, oregano, mint and rosemary - and pulled up a few green garlics from a small bed in my Garden Nbr. 01 where I had deliberately planted garlics too close so that I could use the green ones fresh as I thinned them out. The green garlics looked almost like green onions and are absolutely packed full of garlic juice with a very good garlic flavor.

Starting with my basic recipe for Stone Ground Whole Wheat Crackers (go - HERE - for that recipe), we substituted assorted fresh garden herbs (I also added some purchased sesame seeds that I had on hand) and minced the green garlic for the 1/4 cup of cheese required in that recipe. We also added a few raisins, making the crackers somewhat savory. I would recommend dicing the raisins rather than leaving them whole as I did this time. The dough is rolled out thin, so when forming the crackers, the raisins tended to stick up a bit more than I had anticipated.

We also heated 2 tablespoons of olive oil mixed with a couple more minced garlic cloves, and brushed that over some of the dough after it was rolled out. With my rolling pin, the garlic bits were gently pressed into the top of the cracker dough before we cut the crackers out. That tray of crackers definitely had garlic in every bite.

As it turned out, these Fresh Garden Herbed Whole Crackers went exceptionally well with the Salad Burnet Egg Salad.

Daphne over at Daphne's Dandelions set up Harvest Monday as a way for garden bloggers to show off their harvests. It sounded fun, and a great way to challenge myself to be more creative with my harvests - especially this early in the spring. She's got a great garden going herself this year. Check out her blog to see what's growing there, and read about what's being harvested.

Happy Easter

The Shadow of the Cross

at Christ the King - Bellingham

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Hertz Trail - Redux

The end of the Hertz Trail was blocked by a huge tree the last time we hiked it, so I tossed a fold-up saw into my pack on the way out the door. Hoping that saw would be sufficient for blazing a trail through the brush and stinging nettles that surrounded the giant obstacle in the middle of our trail, I felt relieved once we had hiked in to that point along the trail and discovered that the problem had already been resolved. That fallen tree, now a permanent fixture, has redefined our trail. We now detour slightly to the left, then walk under that fallen tree in order to continue on to the end of the trail. Here's Dena, I and Janel posing under that giant tree. As you can see, it is a huge! It must have been an incredibly tall tree as it lays over the original path and extends way out into Lake Whatcom.

The sun was out as we hiked today making for a pleasant pause at this small beach along our route. With Lake Whatcom our backdrop, Matt joined us in this photo.

To see pictures from when we hiked the Hertz Trail trail earlier this month, and to get more information about this trail, go here - Really Rose Blog - Hertz Trail.

Tennant Lake and Hovander Homestead

Rather than go to a restaurant for lunch, we prepared a picnic and headed over to Tennant Lake where we walked up the steps of this fifty foot tower. We sat on the bench up there and enjoyed the view of Tennant Lake and its surrounding marsh lands with majestic Mount Baker in the background as we dined.

Then we walked through the marsh on the raised boardwalk. This boardwalk had been closed due to severe damage from the flood waters of the nearby Nooksack River several years ago. More information about this marsh and photos of the flooding are available here - Really Rose Blog - Great Classrooms - Tennant Lake. I was delighted to see that repairs have finally been made and the boardwalk is once again open.

The boardwalk meanders through the wooded marsh and along the edge of the lake for a ways before it meanders back through the marsh again and takes us to a gravel trail that leads back to the tower where we ateour lunch. The lake was absolutely full of water lilies. Their buds still rather small, I must try to get back there when they are in bloom.

After thoroughly exploring the Tennant Lake area, we took a nearby trail leading to the Hovander Homestead.

Dena just loves my dog, so Torrie thinks it's okay to sit on the bench with her.

This is the main house at the Hovander Homestead. The yard is full of fruit trees, raspberries, beds of herbs and raised beds just waiting to be planted with garden vegetables maintained by master gardeners from the Washington State University Extension Master Gardener Program. Most of the produce grown at these Hovander Homestead gardens is donated to the Ferndale Food Bank.

This tiny pump at the Hovander Homestead seems dwarfed by the size of this water tower.

There is also a Children's Story Garden and a good sized green house on the grounds. Also maintained by the Master Gardeners, we peaked through the greenhouse windows and saw tables full of tomato plants, no doubt for the Master Gardener Plant Sale that's coming up on May 7th.

Here is a video that was prepared some time ago by KVOS Television about Hovander Homestead Park and the Tennant Lake Interpretative Center.

This video must be several years old because much of the Whatcom County Parks Department funding for this park is no longer available and they have dropped the educational programs they had offerred for the local school children.