Getting sorted and Marmalade making!

The last few days I have been trying to get some sort of order into the chaos of this house!(I am quite embarrassed as I look at this photo!)  Firstly I decided to wash all daughter no. 2's clothes that we will store for two years until she returns and given the weather, it took ages for everything to get dry but we are there now and they are all neatly folded and put away upstairs.  Then there was the need to do some book-sorting.  We have books in virtually every room in the house (except the bathroom, funnily enough!) and I wanted to get all my gardening books together in one place which meant moving a ton of magazines belonging to hubby on fish-keeping! Not that we are actually keeping fish at the moment, mind you.  We used to keep tropical fish up until about 4 years ago and I know hubby would like to have a tank again and is even planning it but we need to wait a bit longer.  Plus I am the queen of magazine hoarding!  I think it will be death by magazines!!  I love them all and although I have given lots away, I still have many to store.  Actually I'd love to do a magazine swap with someone so let me know if you are interested - especially if you are in the US, Canada or Australia.  But enough of all this!  Sorting is one thing but creating something from nothing or at least something very different is what I also love to do, hence the marmalade making.

I had  planned to make marmalade over the weekend.  A new experience for me as I haven't made it before and low and behold what do I find?  My favourite magazine (Country Living) has recipes for marmalade in it and drops into my letterbox at just the right time.  So I decided to follow the three fruit recipe but added a fourth fruit (Lime) just for a bit of zing.

Lots of cutting and chopping

I didn't have any butter muslin hanging around (I wonder why not?!!!) so I used one of those laundry bags for delicates and this seemed to work just as well.  I put all the peel I didn't chop up plus the fruit and pips,pith etc in this bag and it sat in the water for the duration of the cooking of the peel - a couple of hours.

Then it was time to add the sugar and the squeezed juice which I had reserved in a jug.  After 10 or so minutes (I used jam sugar by the way which I get from my local Sainsbury's) it was ready.

Lots of lovely marmalade!  And daughter no.1 and hubby gave it 10.5 out of 10 this morning so I am mightily encouraged.  Anyone for a pot?  Just need to get labels sorted and some nice wrapping.