Things That Are Marmalade

Readers of mrsguy will recall the days in which the lime tree bore one fruit a year, always known as "limey". Those days are gone, and since last year the lime tree fruits like mad and is almost as tall as our second story bedroom window. Our Meyer lemon is also hugely abundant, and it's that season where people in our neighborhood are trying to give other people lemons. For example, I got a small bag of kumquats from someone on our Buy Nothing facebook group, and she tried to entice me to also take a bag of lemons. "Thank you, but I'm *made* of lemons," I replied, and she laughed.

I turned those kumquats into a kumquat marmalade while my mom was staying with us (how I found the time while serving my queen I do not know). It was good, but super pungent. And I didn't do the full deal (i.e. canning it in a hot water bath with rings and lids). Today and yesterday I scratched that particular itch.

I found a lemon lime marmalade recipe that was weird but interesting. You take two pounds of fruit, wash it, trim the ends off and stick the fruit in a big pot of water. Boil until you can poke it with a fork. Turn off the heat and leave it on the stove overnight. The next day, save 4 cups of the water and shell the fruit over a sieve, removing seeds. Slice the shells into slivers and add that, the seeded pulp, 4 cups of lemon water and 4 cups of sugar into a pot. Boil until it's marmalade. When it is, do what you like. I chose to go all the way and boil my jars, lids and rings.

It set perfectly. All of my jars sealed. Great recipe. It was fun handling the wibbledy wobbly fruit. And mrguy says it's delicious, which is the ultimate seal of approval.

Here we are on the boil. You can see the scum pulling together. You do have to clear that scum off as it forms. And it even the scum was tasty.

Here is my finished product, packed up in a motley assortment of canning jars. The biggest one is a remnant from the days when my beloved singing teacher and I would get together and make dill jalapeno pickles. She thought that canning jars were a scam, and had a favorite brand of jarred spaghetti sauce whose jars she'd save for our pickle adventures. Here's to you, Red:

 And one last photo, of something that is also marmalade -- Boy Kitten: