Bread and marmalade
Mar. 18th, 2012 09:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
desperanceI? Am having such a nice morning. Karen's sleeping in, as she does of a weekend; I've forgotten how, so I am pootling about in the kitchen, largely. I'm trying to reactivate my old sourdough starter, from its state of somnolent sludge; and I'm making the first batch of marmalade. It's all experimental: this is the same method that I evolved at home, that produced the jars that K likes so much; but I am regarding these American Sevilles with a jaundiced eye. There seem to be precious few pips in them, and the pips - as we know, Bob - are where the pectin lurks. I am wondering if they've been bred out, by the pectin-additive industry. We'll see. If I don't achieve a set, I guess pectin can be added. But I'd really rather not.
Fretful suspicions aside, this is just such fun. M'friend Jaym deprecates marmalade-making because it's so much work, but m'friend Jaym is mistaken; this is the kind of work I really enjoy. I have fifty-six oranges here, in sixteen pounds of fruit, so I'm making two batches. I've never worked with these quantities before. But I scoop and chop a few oranges, and stir the vat, and knead the bread, and wander through here to poke at the internets, and go back to chop some more, and it is all just delightful. Also, the sun is shining. For practically the first time since I arrived a week ago. It rained again overnight, but now it's all bright out there. It can do that as often as it likes, for all of me.
Fretful suspicions aside, this is just such fun. M'friend Jaym deprecates marmalade-making because it's so much work, but m'friend Jaym is mistaken; this is the kind of work I really enjoy. I have fifty-six oranges here, in sixteen pounds of fruit, so I'm making two batches. I've never worked with these quantities before. But I scoop and chop a few oranges, and stir the vat, and knead the bread, and wander through here to poke at the internets, and go back to chop some more, and it is all just delightful. Also, the sun is shining. For practically the first time since I arrived a week ago. It rained again overnight, but now it's all bright out there. It can do that as often as it likes, for all of me.