Marmalade for everyone

In response to a request, here is the recipe I use for my Seville orange marmalade. It's relatively simple and quick compared to some of those which require leaving overnight. What you need:

1kg Seville Oranges (or ordinary oranges if you can't get Seville)

2 Litres water

2 kg sugar

1 lemon

muslin or a fresh new j-cloth and some cooking twine

two saucers

a candy thermometer (optional but it does help)

Use a big pan with a thinnish bottom - you need to be able to control the cooking temperature easily so forget cast iron casserole dishes. Put your oranges in the water, bring to the boil and simmer for about two hours, covered, until the skin is soft and you can pierce it easily with a fork. Turn the heat off and take the oranges out. Leave the water there.

When the oranges are cool enough to handle, cut them into quarters and gently scrape all the flesh away from the skin. You need to leave the skin itself, and remove most of the white pith. Separate the pips from the flesh and put them on a square of muslin. Put any juice from the flesh back into the water.

Put your two saucers into the freezer.

Cut the skin into thin strips. Leave in a bowl for now.

Add the juice of your lemon, tie the pips in muslin and dangle it into the water. Bring to boil again for about ten-twelve minutes. Put your candy thermometer in the water and keep your temps at about 220 degrees F.

(At this point, preheat your oven to a very slow temperature, about 140 celsius (not sure what this is in fahrenheit). While this is happening, wash your jars - you'll need approx 8 x 250 gm jars or equivalent. When your jars are washed and rinsed, don't dry with a towel but put them on a tray in your oven for about 10 minutes to sterilise.)

Take your pips out. Now add the orange skin, and boil gently until your liquid is reduced by one third. Tip: use a wooden skewer. Dip it in at the start, and mark the level on the skewer. Keep testing until it's down by a third.

Slowly, slowly add your sugar, stirring all the while to help it dissolve. Now simmer uncovered at 220 for about 20 minutes. Stir occasionally.

After 20 minutes, take a saucer out of the freezer and put a little dollop of marmalade on it. After a couple of seconds push it with your finger. If it has a 'skin' on it which wrinkles when you push it, your marmalade is ready to cool. At the most, you should cook your marmalade for no more than 25 minutes or it'll be really thick and gooey and won't spread well. If you find your mixture doesn't set, you can buy pectin from the healthfood store and add a little bit. Your pips in muslin add pectin to the mixture to help it set.

Let the mixture cool somewhat and spoon it into your jars, and seal immediately. Enjoy!!

Meet Penelope

OK, I'd had my heart set on a Velorbis Victoria, but after testing riding a Victoria and a Pashley Princess Sovereign (which I'd INITIALLY had my heart set on until I found out how much they weighed), the balance fell in the Pashley's favour.

Why? Ride quality was good on both, and the Shimano gearset on the Victoria is lovely. It was very tempting. However. The Victoria costs an additional $700 compared to the Pashley. Could I find $700 value in the difference? Um...the Vic's headlight stays on for a minute when you're stationary (quite a nice touch for a dynamo light). It's got more gears and there's not much to choose in quality between Shimano and Sturmey Archer. The Victoria is 4kg lighter, which was tempting. Ultimately I found it hard to justify the extra money for the Victoria, given that one or two people on the internet have questioned build quality and longevity.

So Penelope Pashley has joined our family. This is easily the nicest bike I've ever had - so stable, so smooth. When I sat on her in the shop yesterday I was stunned at the stability even standing still. This is a Rolls Royce of bicycles.

My test ride in both cases was on fairly flat ground with minor upward slopes, which was a bit of a concern. I'm 20 years older (and 10 kg heavier and heaven knows how less fit) than when I first got a mountain bike with 21 gears, I ride a 25 year old 12 speed road bike and get up hills these days without too much gasping, but I'm buying a bike with 5 hub gears which weighs 7kg more than Petunia my mixte. When I bought Petunia last year I hadn't ridden for about ten years; I felt every nuance in the terrain heartily for the first few months.

My first real ride on Penelope today told me I'll be feeling every nuance all over again. Honestly my legs felt like chewed string at the end of 8km (which includes a hill or two). I guess it didn't help that we'd taken our road bikes out this morning for a 16km ride in a park which includes The Long Slow Hill From Hell so my muscles had worked hard already. But what a bike... she feels so stable and once she's up and running the momentum of her weight carries her effortlessly on the flat. I think I'm in love :-).

Here's Penelope, just after I paid for her and took her out of the shop. I'm considering a sugar rush to get over the shock of paying a four figure sum for a bicycle LOL! Thanks to the fantastic Kate of Steel City Cycle Works for importing these wonderful bikes.

Behold marmalade

And here's the first batch for the year. We've tried it and it's absolutely delicious.

My mum gave me another batch-worth of empty jars today so I'll have to return them to her all filled up. While my husband, when on form, can go through a 250ml jar a fortnight, I hope I'll have enough altogether to last us for a year and enable us to supply our family and friends with some orangey delight as well. This year we ran out two months ahead of schedule. I had no idea of my husband's capacity for home-made marmalade - it's twice the capacity for shop bought!!

Sometimes you just gotta do a POETS day...*

Today was the blissful kind of spring day when the air smells of floral scents and the sun on your back actually has a wee bit of warmth in it. Not a hugely blissful day for me to begin with, I'm having a bit of a health scare at the moment and went to see my doctor this morning. Results of tests on Monday so a nervous weekend for me.

To cheer me up my lovely husband, who drove me to the doctor's in case my mind wasn't wholly on the road and traffic, suggested we head out for lunch afterwards. As the doc was running an hour behind schedule and we were both famished by then, I thought it a fantastic idea so we spent two happy hours at a delightful pub in the pseudo-countryside ten minutes' drive from home.

It was almost four by the time we got home - time for a cuppa and realistically not much incentive to get back to work. So we didn't. I did a cursory check of my email, returned some phone calls and headed out into the back garden with my husband, the dog and the cats, watching storm clouds gather. (No day this warm this time of year is complete without some kind of meteorological change.) Picked some lavender to dry for the underwear drawers, pruned a salvia, and tried very hard not to think about test results and the implications if they aren't good.

The weekend is a continuation of this idyllic sunshine so I'll be making marmalade and riding my bike. We haven't decided which bike tracks we'll take this weekend. We've done Homebush Bay and Olympic Park the last two weekend rides and I'm happy to do them again as it's lovely cycling by the river. It'll take my my mind off Monday morning, which is a good thing. Fat lot of sleep I've had this week!

* POETS day: P*ss Off Early, Tomorrow's Saturday

Marmalade in the raw

No, the title isn't what you think. Get rid of those smutty images of unclad people smeared with marmalade!

Today I got my year's supply of Seville Oranges from a lovely lady who lets people pick from her tree once she's taken all the oranges she needs for her own marmalade. She doesn't ask for payment and is happy to help others. She also has a couple of really lovely Siamese cats, but as it was raining today, and Siamese will be Siamese, they had elected to sleep in the comfort of indoors rather than 'help' me pick oranges as they did last year.

So this weekend the business of making marmalade will begin. I have enough oranges for about five batches I think. Making a batch takes you at least half a day although you can do other things while the oranges are simmering for two hours.

If I am very, very lucky this haul of flavoursome fruit will last my husband most of the next twelve months. He was reasonably greedy with last year's batch and had licked the spoon clean on the last bottle by June. He's Marmalade Man. He's been eating it since he was a wee bairn in Scotland. I love my marmalade too but not to the extent he does.

For me a lot of the pleasure comes from making it rather than eating it. There's something old-fashioned and delightful about making preserves. And the home-made variety leave the supermarket stock in the shade when it comes to taste.

Roll on weekend!

Ahh, spring!

Spring started here officially yesterday. Australia is practical like that - start your seasons on the first of the month regardless of the solstice. Spring really does seem to start at the end of August, particularly where I live. Over the last week green shoots have started to appear on just about everything, the daffodils are out, the jonquils have almost finished, the sweet peas are in full bloom. Golden wattle (a blessing if you love the look and scent, a curse if you get hay fever) is brightening up the local parks. And best of all anyone who grows jasmine is delightfully responsible for filling the air with perfume. Here's ours out the front, looking towards our front door.

And a few more around the front... jonquils, and our new and sparkling hanging baskets with the pelargonium Tomgirl. I love this deep red, it's crimson gone to the dark side.

I've enjoyed my rides the last few days even more than usual with the heady scents of early spring emanating from peoples' gardens. One guy up the road has his entire front fence covered in jasmine, and you can smell it several doors away.

The ponies in the little field a few blocks away are starting to shed their shaggy winter coats, and are enjoying the lush new green growth.

Hibernating winter gardeners (not that we have a particularly cold winter here) have been busy with the compost and fertiliser, and the less attractive scent of chicken shit mingles with the florals.

This is the perfect time of year to do stuff outdoors. In summer the heat and humidity is punishing, but right now it's a pleasure getting out and pedalling after lunch. The warm sun on our backs, the air still cool enough to stop us overheating.

Life just doesn't get any better than early spring.

Charley the Catburglar

Sharing a house with two blue-eyed mischievous cats provides us with a daily giggle. They're always up to something daft, evil or funny. Charley is one for choosing his own toys - which are items that were not designed with that purpose. As an adolescent he nicked a furry koala that is supposed to grip onto your bookshelves or act as a page marker or something. I had it high up on my bookshelf. Then it was on the floor. Then he was chucking it around. Two years later he still chucks it around but there's not much left of it.

At Mum's house he has a thing for clothespegs. When the animals stay with her, when Greg and I go away, she finds clothespegs in the living room and kitchen, or catches him in the act of ferrying them about. Unrepetant, he gives her a "What?" stare. It's not that he and Annabel (and Rosie the dog) are shortchanged on toys. They have dozens between them. Annabel scorns them all and plays with sweet wrappers.

Now Monsieur has decided he wants the clothes brush for his very own. It lives on the top shelf of our walk-in robe, and three times in the last week I've found it on the floor in the morning. On Sunday I found it downstairs hidden under a seat, tucked away next to my footstool (which he also covets and pushes into his favourite hiding place under cover of darkness). Yesterday I heard a thumping in the robe and there he was, picking up the handle in his mouth and pushing it towards the edge of the shelf before dropping it. He's doing it again now. We could find a different hiding place for it but then I suspect we'd BOTH forget where it was....until Charley found it again for us.