i believe that jess has finally convinced me to resurrect the blog.

in the last year or so, i’ve gotten really into food preservation, particularly freezing and canning.  it is a great way to extend the summer growing season and have fresh and yummy food available all year long. ideally, i would be preserving local food.  however, it is impossible for me to resist the call of all the delicious citrus fruits now in season to the south of us. i recently purchased a metric ton of blood oranges through my csa.  it ended up in a bunch of edible forms.  in addition to eating them fresh for the last couple of weeks, i’ve made blood orange olive oil cake (yummy!), blood orange vinaigrette for salads, and blood orange vanilla marmalade.

yummy blood orange vanilla marmalade

look at those gorgeous jars of pretty, pretty jewel red marmalade.  i cracked open a jar this morning and we enjoyed a breakfast of fresh biscuits with blood orange vanilla marmalade and peach lemon jam, which i made last summer. i’m really happy with the flavor.  just enough bitterness to balance out the super sweetness. i slightly modified this blood orange marmalade recipe from food in jars.

sunday breakfast nom nom nom

blood orange vanilla marmalade

10 – 12 blood oranges – enough for about 10 cups, give or take
4 cups sugar
1 cup blood orange juice – any juice will do really
juice of 1 lemon
1 or 2 vanilla beans
2 packets liquid pectin

sterilize your jars and lids as needed, get your water bath going.

place fruit, sugar, orange juice, and lemon juice in a non-reactive pot and get it boiling.   some marmalade instructions have you remove the fruit flesh from the pith, but i just toss it all in.  it ends up separating quite a bit as it heats up. scrape the seeds from the two vanilla beans into the pot and drop the beans in there too. reduce the temperature and simmer until it is shiny and starting to thicken.  most recipes say about 10 – 15 minutes.  i cooked this one down for almost 30 minutes as i wanted the peels to get nice and soft.  squirt in your pectin and bring to a boil for another couple of minutes. remove the dead vanilla bean bodies at this time.  ladle into your sterilized jars with about 1/2 inch headspace.  process for 10 minutes. this recipe got me 7 half pint jars and the cute, little quarter pint you see in the photo above.

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