The Marmalade Incident

The aftermath of the great marmalade incident of ’11.

As mentioned in my last post, I learned to make marmalade. As I may not have previously mentioned, I can be a bit obsessive about new things. My Blue Chair Fruit Company visit may have triggered an obsessive streak of marmalade making. If you look at the side bar, you will see I made a total of 24 pints of marmalade in February (in 8 ounce servings… so 48 jars of marmalade). What the side bar does not tell you is that total amount, plus another 6 pints I was not happy with and dumped after canning, were all produced in a 5 day period. I am not quite sure where the line between “obsessive” and “manic” is, but I may have been close then. Maybe.

During this obsessive marmalade making period, I did not actually remember to take pictures of the product. Instead you get a picture of 3 boxes about to head out in the world (to New Jersey, California and Kentucky) to some of my college friends that caught wind of what I was doing and expressed that they would not be sad if I were to inflict some upon them. These were mailed out a week before I inflicted an additional 21 pints on the staff and Chef of my favorite restaurant. We often go there for drinks but brought the marmalade when we went for my birthday dinner so I felt like a kid again bestowing party favors on everyone. Last night was the first time we had been back for drinks since the infliction of marmalade and I was very excited to receive positive feedback.

I think I have exhausted the marmalade itch. For now at least. Having an unintentionally failed batch was good for that. I definitely learn better when I do things wrong. The marmalade set but was burnt in my opinion. It was an interesting effect, but now with the fruit I had used in that batch. But there may be some burnt orange marmalade experimentation in my future.