Making the best marmalade ever

My friend Joan has given me a jar of her homemade marmalade every year or so for some time. I finally asked her if she would be willing to show me how to make what I consider the best marmalade I've ever tasted. Earlier this week she came to my house with her two beautiful All-clad pots and we made two batches of delicious and beautiful marmalade.

The first batch was with Ruby Grapefruit, Blood Orange, and Meyer Lemon. Here's how you do it:


Ingredients:
1 Ruby Grapefruit
5 medium size blood oranges
4 medium size Meyer lemons
water (see below for quantity)
sugar (see below for quantity)

Wash all the fruit. Use a vegetable peeler to remove the zest from each piece of fruit. Cut the zest into very thin matchstick pieces. Remove the white pith from the fruit. Separate the sections and remove seeds and any thick membranes. Cut the fruit into small pieces. Measure the zest and pulp. Dump all the zest and pulp into a large, heavy saucepan. Add the same number of cups of water, plus one cup. Bring the mixture to a boil and simmer for about 45 minutes. Add one cup of granulated sugar for each cup of pulp and zest. Cook over medium heat, stirring regularly, until you notice slight thickening and a "translucent quality". Put a small amount of the mixture on a saucer and place it in the freezer. Remove the saucer from the freezer after exactly 2 minutes. The marmalade is done when the test sample moves very slowly when you tilt the saucer. Remove pan from heat and ladle marmalade into hot jars. Top with boiled lids and twist tight. Turn upside-down on a towel for 10 - 15 minutes. Invert jars and let them cool completely. Jar lids should seal with a "pop". But don't worry if they don't "pop" because you can always keep them in the refrigerator.



I'm not sure I can tell you how to recognize "translucent quality", but the test works just fine. Start testing before you think it's ready and you'll be fine. It's problem if you overcook the marmalade because it will be too hard and you'll have to heat it in the microwave before you can spread it on your toast.

The second batch was Ruby Grapefruit, Seville Oranges, and Meyer Lemon with Ginger. Here's what you need to make it:

Ingredients:
1 Ruby grapefruit
4 Seville orange
4 Meyer lemons
a scant 1/4 cup finely grated fresh ginger
3/4 cup finely chopped candied ginger

The procedure is similar to what I've described above. Except you add the fresh ginger after you add the sugar and you add the candied ginger just before the marmalade is done cooking.
This is Joan using a silicon spatula to get the dregs from the bottom of the pan. She suggests you put the last bit in a jar or dish and keep it in the refrigerator until you've had a chance to eat it. It won't be as good as the rest of the marmalade because it's always a little too thick.

We used a mixture of real canning jars and recycled jars. I like the little artichoke jars that hold 6.5 ounces because they make nice hostess gifts. The larger Bon Maman jars are good to keep for our own use.

I wish you could taste our marmalade. It's the best ever.

My second grade classroom

1. My second grade classroom was one of six in what was then a new school building, three on each side of a long central hallway. I can still see the rack where we hung our coats and jackets when we arrived each morning. It was built into the room--very modern with clean lines and blond polished wood. I dreamed once that I arrived at school, lined up with my classmates when the bell rang, and filed down the short length of hallway to my classroom. When I took off my coat, standing in front of that built-in coat rack, I was wearing only my slip. It was plain white with a narrow band of lace at the hem and a tiny pink satin rose in the middle of the front. I don't remember what happened next. Maybe I woke up. Maybe I put my coat back on and walked home to get my dress. That's all I remember of the dream, but it is clear as day.

2. My second grade classroom smelled different when we returned to school after winter vacation. The janitors had waxed and polished all the floors until they gleamed. The strange smell was the wax they used. I thought the janitors must have missed us when we stayed away for those two long weeks and they polished the floors to welcome us back.

For the first few days after we came back, boys kept falling over backwards in their chairs with a loud bang. It happened when they leaned their chairs back on two legs and slipped on the gleaming, fragrant floors. We would all laugh at the boy who would usually act embarrassed. But some of them had already learned to cover up being embarrassed emotion with their own loud laughter.

I just realized why only boys fell over backwards like that. The girls all wore dresses so we couldn't push back on just two legs like the boys. Everyone would be able to see our underpants. we knew that it was bad if people could see our underpants but I didn't know why it was bad. Now I know protecting my underpants from being seen also kept me from falling over backwards in my chair. I would have been so embarrassed, not like the boys that just laughed it off. Boys aren't like girls.

3. Mrs. Burkett was my second grade teacher. She wore bright red lipstick and she'd often catch a bit of it on her crooked front tooth. It sounds ugly, but it wasn't. It made her smile friendlier.

4. Second grade was the year we kept a monarch caterpillar in a glass terrarium in our classroom. The terrarium was on the shelf right above my hook on the coat rack. The caterpillar climbed up and down the branches in the terrarium until it finally stopped and turned itself into a chrysalis. I remember thinking it was the most beautiful color of green. We watched and waited for a long time. Then one morning when we came in and started hanging our coats someone noticed the chrysalis had burst open and the butterfly was trying to come out. It took the butterfly all morning to work its way out of the chrysalis. When it had emerged it was all wrinkled and it looked wet. At 2:30, when we went home, the butterfly still looked damp and crumpled. But when we came back the next morning it was all dry and smoothed out--its wings looked freshly painted. Out teacher invited the other classes to visit our room so they could see our butterfly. We were polite during the visits, but we knew we were better than they were because we had a real monarch butterfly. The next day our teacher told us it was time to let our butterfly go free. So we took it outside and left the lid off the terrarium until it flew away.