Marmalade, Part 2

Okay, so we are in the middle of the most terrible pandemic since the Black Death, with stock markets crashing all around the world and the health services struggling to cope with more and more cases. There is, quite obviously, only one thing to be done: make homemade marmalade.

First you need a lot of oranges and sugar. My dear Irena says that it is more or less one kilo of sugar to a kilo of fruit. Then you need to “top and tail” the oranges and start the long, laborious process of peeling. Now don’t go breaking my heart, as Elton John and Kikki Dee used to sing, by throwing away any of that peel. When the outer, orangey peel has been peeled, then you need to peel it again (yes, I know it is not so exciting) in order to get rid of the white stuff.

Then all of the orange peel and then all of the oranges go into the splendid Bosch mincer. This Bosch mincer is the real deal. (Yes, I do hope that a kind and generous Bosch executive is reading this blog and then maybe we can make some sort of sponsorship deal, please.) Anyway, the peel becomes super-minced, almost a paste, in a very short time. It is a good idea to cut up the oranges into quarters, so that they will go more easily into that superb example of German engineering, otherwise known as a Bosch mincer.

Then it all goes into a big pan. Putting the pan onto a woodburning stove is optional. You could just use an ordinary stove, if unfortunately you do not happen to be lucky enough (like we are!) to have big piles of firewood and a woodburning stove that is keeping your kitchen toasty-warm, while at the same time heating up that pan of orangey yumminess.

After about an hour, the magic has happened and you just need to put your new batch of marmalade into some clean jars.

Once you have tasted the real, authentic, homemade marmalade, then you will see the shop-bought rubbish for what it is: watery, tasteless, fruitless and overpriced garbage.

Winter has returned. Tina likes sitting in front of the central heating boiler, listening to the tinkling sound of the pellets falling into the combustion chamber. She is not really interested in marmalade.