grapefruit marmalade

Sometimes I wonder how much I am eating the fresh produce each week, and how much I am just moving around, cooking, freezing, and canning to eat later. I feel like the little kid who keeps pushing food into new places on his plate so it will look like he has eaten something. I haven't thrown out any lately... barely. I have given some to friends in the form of dinners. I doled out quite a few jars of jam during teacher appreciation week. I have also fully stocked my freezer with lasagnas, casseroles, and potatoes. I think I will be glad to have these things when the long winter months bring me more and more squashes, turnips, and parsnips. It will be nice to open a jar of strawberry jam when the only fruit I have seen for weeks is an orange. It will make things easy when I can pull a veggie lasagna out of the freezer while my kids are staging a mid-winter cabbage revolution. But if we are eating the strawberry jam and veggie casseroles next January, who will eat the acorn squash and the beets? Am I going to end up with enough prepared food to feed an army, but only a family of three reluctant kids?

At any rate, for now I am having a blast canning my jams and marmalades. Let's leave the worrying about who is going to eat it all for another time.

This week, I got some big beautiful grapefruits in my box. I decided to try them out in a grapefruit marmalade.

The result is a delicious, slightly  bitter, beautiful orange-colored marmalade! I am so happy to have this on hand.

It is made much like an orange marmalade. However, unlike with oranges, you don't use the whole grapefruit. Because the pith is so much more plentiful and more bitter, it needs to be removed. This is done by first peeling the outer skin off with a vegetable peeler (to use),  and then peeling the inner pith layer by hand (to throw away).

Once you have your peeled zest, you chop it up very finely. Do this for both your grapefruits and a lemon. Then you cut the remaining fruit into smallish chunks, saving as much of the juice as you can. From here on out, it can be treated just like orange marmalade.

I made this recipe with 4 large grapefruits and one lemon.

First, combine the grapefruit zest, the chopped up fruit, reserved juice, and 5 cups of water. Bring it all to a boil and then remove from heat. While it is still hot, stir in 5 cups of sugar. Leave this all on the counter overnight, to soften the fruit and the zest.

The next day, return the pot to the stove and cook over medium heat. Stir it occasionally, and bring it to a boil that reaches 220 degrees on a candy thermometer. This will take at least half an hour.

When it reaches 220 degrees, remove from heat. Skim off any foam that has formed, and ladle into sterilized jars, leaving 1/4 inch head space. Wipe clean the rims and screw lids on until they are finger-tip tight.  Process the jars in boiling water for 10 minutes (15 minutes for altitudes above 1,000 feet and 20 minutes above 1500 feet). Remove jars from the boiling water and let them sit undisturbed for 12-24 hours. You will know if they are properly sealed if the lid doesn't give at all when you press on the center.

This makes 6 half-pint jars of delicious marmalade.

So aPEELing (I couldn't help myself)

Last week, I mused, somewhat facetiously, about the fact that there is no part of the vegetable that can't be used... be that leaf, root, stem, etc.

It got me to thinking. (Some people think and then talk about their ideas. Some people talk and then think about what they've said. I'm not saying it's a good thing.)

Why throw away peels?

I searched (and I found that once again millions of internet users had beaten me to the punch), and I read several recipes for candied citrus peels.

Let me back up a little bit. There is a gal at my work who celebrates her birthday this week. I wish I could give her my $1,000 car repair bill, but I can't. I also can't give her anything very extravagant for her birthday, even though she deserves the world. I decided to make her something instead.

Okay, back to peels.

This recipe can be done with any type of citrus peel. I happened to have several citrus fruits that had retired, and were ready to try a second career. I used 5 lemons (that had previously been a pitcher of lemonade), one navel orange (from a banana-orange smoothie), and 2 grapefruits (my breakfast).

The first thing to do is to quarter the fruits, and cut out all of the flesh. Put all of the peels into a pot, and cover with cold water. Bring this to a boil, and boil for one minute. Drain the water, and fill it back up again with cold water, and bring it back to a boil for another minute.

You need to do this a total of four times. Not all recipes asked for this step to be repeated, but the ones that did, said it helped limit some of the bitterness. And since there were several reviews of several recipes that said it turned out too bitter, I felt it was well worth my time.

Let the peels cool enough that you can handle them. The next step is to scrape as much pith as you an out of each peel. This is also to help with bitterness.

But save all that pith... once it dries, you can sew it into sachets, which will keep your linens fresh.

I'm just kidding. I have to draw the line somewhere at what parts of the dang plant we can use. Throw the scraped pith out. It's had a good life, and it is time to let it go.

After scraping out the pith, slice the peels into thin strips.

In a saucepan, bring to a boil two cups of water and two cups of sugar. Once it is boiling and all the sugar has dissolved, you can add the peels back in.

Stir and boil, boil and stir. The recipes said that after 10 minutes, the peels would be almost translucent, and the water almost gone. It took me 25 minutes, but it worked.

Again, wait a bit for this to cool. Spread the peels out on a cooling rack, separated from each other, so the syrup can drain.

Once they have cooled quite a bit, but haven't gotten dry, shake them, a few at a time, in sugar. And enjoy!

Or give them to someone else to enjoy!