A re-post from my old blog, now moth-balled. Written in early spring of 2012.
Marmalade fruit preserve made from the juice and peel of citrus fruits and water. The benchmark citrus fruit for marmalade production in Britain is the Seville orange thus called because it was originally only grown in Spain; it is higher in pectin than most oranges and therefore gives a good set. The peel has a distinctive bitter taste which it imparts to the marmalade. Marmalade can be made from lemons, limes, grapefruits, mandarins and sweet oranges or any combination thereof.Wikipedia
During my working week, and often at the weekends, I spend a great deal of time engaged in mental activity of the most intense complexity. I kid you not, much of the time even I do not understand what I am thinking and I often sit back and wonder what kind of weird and wonderful world this is in which I now find myself.
So
much mental activity is not good for a person. Indeed I firmly believe
that we homo sapiens are insufficiently evolved to cope with the
technology that we have developed and are frantically running to catch
up with ourselves.
Certainly
the internet is changing us physiologically, recent studies suggest
that our brains are changing, our 'soft-wiring' is altering as we spend
more and more time in the 'wired-world.' Purely personally I find my
attention span shrinking as my desire for instant-information
gratification is expanding.
So it was time to spend some time in physical, real-world activities that do not require much brain power and yesterday I came across a post devoted to marmalade over
at the blog 'my french country home' which I read daily (despite the
ads) and decided that marmalade would be just the thing for a Saturday
away from the office...
Marmalade
is ridiculously easy to make. Actually much of that which we are
offered on the shelves of the supermarkets ready-made, is easy to make,
tastes much, much better and is free of nasty chemicals and I, for one,
am slowly becoming a devotee of home-made. 
For
marmalade organic fruit is not just a luxury but a necessity. I will
refrain from writing about the pesticides and waxes to which citrus
fruit are 'treated' as they grow from flower to fruit but since
marmalade is made from the peel and pith and pips as well as the fruit
itself, all that you want in your pan is pure fruit and sunshine.
I
like my marmalade with thin slivers of peel, they give it a pleasantly
crunchy texture that goes perfectly with well-toasted,
lavishly-buttered, brown bread, so I sliced but you could chop or dice
if that is your choice.
However
you prepare the fruit, the scents of citrus that are released as your
knife slices through the peel are wonderful, especially on an
early-spring morning when summer seems elusive and far away and the risk
of rain is ever present.
Once
sliced the fruit is popped into a pan, covered with water and left to
soak. Overnight is best but mine only had a few hours because I wanted
to make the marmalade in time for Sunday breakfast.
Time for a walk with the dog...
The
only disadvantage to living in The Doll's House is the lack of a decent
garden. The plot at the back of the house is too small and mean to be
called a garden and I tend to ignore it, save for hanging my washing
there. Well, few things in life are perfect, I make up for this by
enjoying other people's gardens, albeit by way of secret glimpses
through fences and hedges and the odd surreptitious and rather guilty
photograph taken when no-one is looking.
Happily,
the green is right on my doorstep and is a perfectly lovely garden for
the dog and me. And it has the added bonus of a regular supply of nice
people and their dogs so we pause, and exchange greetings and sometimes I
walk alongside them while my dog plays with their dogs. I am quite fond
of my 'other dogs' some of whom kiss my nose if I bend down low enough,
it reminds me that if I were in France it is the men who would be
kissing me and not the dogs but I don't mind, a kiss is a kiss... 
Back to the kitchen...
The
pips from the fruit must be tied in little muslin bags and added to the
pan because the pectin in them helps the marmalade to set. I have no
muslin, I am not so organised, a strip from an old, clean net curtain
suffices. And then the fruit and water is boiled for a couple of hours
and the citrus scents now seep into all of the rooms of the small house
and are as lovely as an expensive pot-pourri but better somehow. And
while that is all going on in the kitchen time can be spent on other
things, in my case, my French studies and an intense session with past
tenses that lasted for four hours and left me reeling.
After
the initial boiling sugar is added. The same weight of sugar as fruit
which realisation made me pause and wonder how I would know because the
fruit was now in the water and had been boiled, until common sense
returned to nudge me and politely suggest that I weigh another orange,
lemon and grapefruit from the bowl on the cupboard. D'oh...
And
then another hour of bubbling in the pan and frequent admiring glances
as the whole lot becomes soft and syrupy and much dipping in of the tip
of a wooden spoon because the taste is absolutely divine.
And then the bottling...
Did I say that marmalade is easy to make?
Alas,
something fundamental went wrong with my marmalade. I suspect
insufficient pips. I had thought as I sliced the fruit that it was
distinctly lacking in the pip-department, and was a little worried but
hoped that using sugar with added pectin would be enough.
It wasn't. My marmalade is runny.
I
am not despondent. I shall pour some onto my Sunday-morning toast
regardless because the taste is so very lovely and the rest, the other
two jars, I will use to add to sponge-puddings and tarts and cakes, a
kind of sharp syrupy kiss.
And
one day in the week, when my head is too stuffed-full of complex
computer code and the latest bank Trojan trickery, I shall return home
to spend a sane and peaceful evening making Marmalade Mark II.
A little gift of sunshine and citrus from this Oxfordshire village...
