Orange Ginger Marmalade!

I've been making jam and pickles for years, and have gotten into a nice groove with those feeling comfortable with any type of pickle, relish or jam recipe. One thing i had never made was marmalade though, so this year I decided to try a batch. I researched a bunch on the interslice, and found some blog postings about many different ways to make marmalade. Chopping up the oranges whole with the pith... grating the skin off, throwing the pith out and digging out the meaty bits, and many other techniques. It was kind of confusing, but i decided to go with just shaving off the orange part of the skins, and dicing it up, carving the pith off and throwing it out (composting it of course), and then chopping up the meaty orange bits. I also decided to use a bunch of orange juice that i juiced instead of the 4 cups of water for a richer orange taste, and I also decided to grate a bunch of ginger to add on suggestion of a blog post i read about marmalade. I decided to use a packaged liquid pectin instead of fooling around with boiling the membranes and seeds.

So all seemed to go according to plan, and i ended up with 5 Pint size jars of marmalade, which is a little big, but i didn't have half pint jars. The next morning i wake up and check the jars and the marmalade was the consistency of water. *sad*. So I read up on re batching and decided I might not have let it simmer or maybe I didn't add enough pectin. However, 2nd session was a fail as well as it didn't set up this time either. Pawlie suggested the pectin might be expired.. and lo and behold... it was. I didn't realize that it stopped working after getting kind of old. So i bought some new pectin, re batched a THIRD time, and it finally set up!!! :) Lesson learned.

I also made some yummy garlic dill pickles and this year decided to add some turmeric to my dill recipe to green them up a bit. Normally I only put turmeric in bread and butter pickles, but I noticed that the store bought ones have it on the ingredient list, and i like the greeny colour store bought dills have. So we'll see how that turns out in a few months. I also added some hot chili pepper flakes to two jars for some spicier pickles!



Finally, I attended a fun soap making class at Everdale a while ago, and my first batch turned out so nicely. It's amazingly easy. I can't wait to make my next batch!