Making marmalade

Because people asked, this is my process which is mine, because I made it up. It's hardly a recipe, it's so simple.

Buy a weight of oranges. Buy the same weight of sugar. Have a tap. These are your ingredients.

Put the oranges in a big pot, and add water. The moment they start to float, stop (or stop sooner; they don't all need to be covered, and the more water you add, the longer the cooking, the darker the marmalade).

Put a lid on the pan and bring it to the boil. Reduce the heat, boil an hour, turn it off, leave it overnight.

Next day, put a colander in a big bowl and drape it with muslin.

Extract your oranges from the water. Add all the sugar to the water, and put on a low heat. Stir occasionally. Meanwhile halve all your oranges and scoop out the insides, pips and flesh together; put all of that in the muslin-lined colander.

Chop the orange rinds and add to the pot. Tie up the muslin into a bag and add that. A lot of juice will have drained through the colander into the bowl; add that.

Check that all the sugar has dissolved and bring the pot to a serious boil.

Boil to the setting-point (this may take an hour or more, depending how much water you started with; don't worry, it won't burn and it will get there in the end), and pot up in sterilised jars.

Enjoy.

Not cute at all

First, here is Barry, he who is lordly and robed in dignity. Inna box.



Second, here is Mac, mighty assassinator of cake-remnants -



- playing with his ball in a sunbeam. Not cute at all, oh no:



...And lastly, here am I, seriously not cute at all. Full of cold and foul of temper, apparently. I went to go to Walgreens for cold-medicine, but I obviously wasn't going to make it that far, so I stalled out at Target. Where I was doing fine until the woman on the till demanded ID for the medicine. Thinking back, I'm fairly sure Karen warned me of this last night, but I hadn't remembered. And of course I only had my passport, and then she had to summon a supervisor, and then she had to enter my date of birth and she couldn't understand it, and and and. It went on for ever and I nearly just walked out and I was certainly swearing under my breath but not far under, possibly not far enough. Technically of course it's interesting what different countries decide to regulate, but not when I'm standing there feeling rotten and they're faffing about making me prove that I'm old enough to buy a sodding cold medicine. I'm fifty-three years old, people, and it wasn't interesting at all.