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desperanceTen pounds of oranges? Turns out to be a stockpotful, with precious little space over. So I boiled 'em up - with care - yesterday, and left them to sit overnight. And was going to address them this morning, and then this afternoon, but stuff got in the way; and it wasn't really until the early evening that I started in with the marmalading process.
Ten pounds of sugar? Is a hell of a lot of sugar. Tipping that into the pan with the orange-boiling-water was kinda nervous-making, because it looked like way too much.
Ten pounds of oranges? Is thirty-seven oranges, when you talk about Sevilles. That's seventy-four halves, when you've halved them. That's seventy-four pulps to be scooped out, which is a hell of a lot to try to wrap up in one sheet of cheesecloth; and then seventy-four rinds to be chopped up and added back to the pot. And then the giant cheesecloth bag goes in too, and - yeah. We were within half an inch of the rim, people, before it even started simmering.
And then Karen came home and Mark came round for dinner, and I hadn't even started cooking dinner, but I reassured them: look, I said, I've just put my British thermometer in and it says it's almost at the setting point already and it's barely started boiling, I just need to stand over it and simmer carefully for a bit, I'll be done in half an hour...
Hah. An hour and a half later, m'wife came gently to remind me that we had a guest and he was starving and perhaps I should do something about that?
So I added my American thermometer to the mix. The British one said we were way over setting temperature; the US one said we weren't quite there yet. I figured the US one should know what it was talking about, and started cooking dinner around the edges of the seething monster that was the marmalade pan.
Next time I looked? ALL THE NUMBERS HAD BOILED OFF THE AMERICAN THERMOMETER. The mercury was fine, thanks, it said we were this hot - but I had no way of knowing how hot this was. So I fell back on the old saucer trick, and boiled on. And on.
And we ate dinner, while the marmalade boiled on.
And then finally I got wrinkles on my saucer, and Mark went home, and I bottled up my marmalade.
Ten pounds of oranges, plus ten pounds of sugar, plus water to cover? Makes twelve pints of marmalade, apparently, plus a little bowlful for testing in the morning. It's very dark - mature, we call it - after all that endless boiling. This doesn't distress me, it's kind of how I like it; but oy, it really should not have taken that long. More than two hours of boiling, that was; and okay, it started at a gentle simmer and I only turned it up once I'd boiled off enough to make a vigorous bubble safe, but even so. Insane.
We'll see how it tastes in the morning. We actually ran out of last year's marmalade three days ago; I think probably I'll go back to the lovely grocery store in SF and buy more oranges, to make half-pints to give away, because twelve pints is probably a comfortable supply for us but I do have this bad habit of giving jars to people, 'cos I'm kind of proud of my marmalade generally, all things considered. Only if I do that, perhaps I'll get a little less than ten pounds next time...
Ten pounds of sugar? Is a hell of a lot of sugar. Tipping that into the pan with the orange-boiling-water was kinda nervous-making, because it looked like way too much.
Ten pounds of oranges? Is thirty-seven oranges, when you talk about Sevilles. That's seventy-four halves, when you've halved them. That's seventy-four pulps to be scooped out, which is a hell of a lot to try to wrap up in one sheet of cheesecloth; and then seventy-four rinds to be chopped up and added back to the pot. And then the giant cheesecloth bag goes in too, and - yeah. We were within half an inch of the rim, people, before it even started simmering.
And then Karen came home and Mark came round for dinner, and I hadn't even started cooking dinner, but I reassured them: look, I said, I've just put my British thermometer in and it says it's almost at the setting point already and it's barely started boiling, I just need to stand over it and simmer carefully for a bit, I'll be done in half an hour...
Hah. An hour and a half later, m'wife came gently to remind me that we had a guest and he was starving and perhaps I should do something about that?
So I added my American thermometer to the mix. The British one said we were way over setting temperature; the US one said we weren't quite there yet. I figured the US one should know what it was talking about, and started cooking dinner around the edges of the seething monster that was the marmalade pan.
Next time I looked? ALL THE NUMBERS HAD BOILED OFF THE AMERICAN THERMOMETER. The mercury was fine, thanks, it said we were this hot - but I had no way of knowing how hot this was. So I fell back on the old saucer trick, and boiled on. And on.
And we ate dinner, while the marmalade boiled on.
And then finally I got wrinkles on my saucer, and Mark went home, and I bottled up my marmalade.
Ten pounds of oranges, plus ten pounds of sugar, plus water to cover? Makes twelve pints of marmalade, apparently, plus a little bowlful for testing in the morning. It's very dark - mature, we call it - after all that endless boiling. This doesn't distress me, it's kind of how I like it; but oy, it really should not have taken that long. More than two hours of boiling, that was; and okay, it started at a gentle simmer and I only turned it up once I'd boiled off enough to make a vigorous bubble safe, but even so. Insane.
We'll see how it tastes in the morning. We actually ran out of last year's marmalade three days ago; I think probably I'll go back to the lovely grocery store in SF and buy more oranges, to make half-pints to give away, because twelve pints is probably a comfortable supply for us but I do have this bad habit of giving jars to people, 'cos I'm kind of proud of my marmalade generally, all things considered. Only if I do that, perhaps I'll get a little less than ten pounds next time...