Days of limes and oranges

Sunday was my one day "off" this week (renos are back in full swing!). So, of course, I decided to make marmalade. This was my first attempt at any jam/jelly type thing, so doing it on a day where nothing else was happening was a good thing. And if I hadn't had forgotten to take my brain with me when I went shopping, it would have gone soooo much better.

I had decided to make three different recipes, and thought I had all the ingredients on my list. And since all the recipes list the amount of sugar by volume, but it's sold by weight, I had to figure out how many cups in a package. I wondered a bit when every site I saw said there were only 4 cups in a 2 pound package, but since each site said the same thing...

(Notice my mistake yet?)

One recipe was for blood orange marmalade, since they were on sale for $2.00 a pound. So, I very nicely weighed out 3 pounds of them, wondering a bit when they completely filled a produce bag...

(See it now?)

I got the rest of the ingredients, a couple of other items, all fours packages of sugar, and headed to the checkout.

Where I almost fell over when the blood oranges rang up at over $14.

(Now?)

Yeah. That's it. I live in Canada, and have for my entire life. And we use the metric system, and have been for almost my entire life.

I apparently forgot this, and thus bought twice as much sugar and twice as many blood oranges as I needed.



At least when I'm wrong, I'm consistent...

I started with the easiest recipe Sunday morning, a four-fruit marmalade with naval oranges, lemons, limes and grapefruit.

Four-fruit marmalade

After that was done, I started on the first of the two batches of the blood orange marmalade.  It was a bit more labour intensive, but not too bad.

Blood orange marmalade

Needless to say, I was a bit tired after both those batches were done, and I wasn't in the mood to go back to the store when I realized I also didn't write down everything I needed for the third recipe. And by that point, I was re-thinking the effort required for that recipe, so I simply modified the first recipe by replacing the lime with another lemon, and two oranges with my last blood orange and one more grapefruit.

I also forgot to take a picture of it, so look back at the first one, and imagine it a bit more pink :)

Clockwise from top left: Blood Orange, Mixed-Fruit, Four-Fruit

The verdict? They are all tasty, but not perfect. Not bad, mind you, for my first attempt! But the lime peels in the first batch are still too hard and I find that recipe too sweet, the blood orange version didn't set completely, and the last batch is a bit too tart. In the future, I'll make both the four-fruit and blood orange versions again, reducing the sugar a bit for the first, and cooking longer for the second.

But, of course, since I ended up with 15 pints of marmalade, I won't be making any more for quite a while....

It's a good thing I like marmalade!!