Orange Marmalade

In the middle of winter there are not many fruits that are in season, but one such useful fruit is the Seville Orange, which is available between January and February. The Seville Orange is also known as bitter orange, and has a very bitter or sour taste, but the reason I am interested in it is its use in making marmalade. Following a recipe from the Preserves book in the River Cottage Handbook series, today I bought a kilo of Seville Oranges and two kilos of demerara sugar.

So far I have cut the oranges up, squeezed the juice out and shredded the peel. Once this was done, I re-added the juice and covered the shredded peel with water. It is currently in my kitchen looking a bit like this:

 

They will remain in the bowl for 24 hours before being turned into about 6 450g jars of marmalade.

The seeds that I planted the other week are coming up well, and only a couple of seeds don't appeared to have come through, but there are plenty to help me start a herb garden once they get a big bigger and it gets a bit warmer outside. This is what it currently looks like on my kitchen window sill:

I think, moving from left-to-right we have sage, basil, chives and oregano but, due to my lousy record-keeping, I will have a much better idea when they grow a bit more.

First Sowing of the Year

Today I started my somewhat smaller gardening year by sowing a couple of different herbs. These consist of basil, garlic chives, sage, and oregano. I am only growing 8 modules of each herb since I am sowing them so early, but I wanted to get a start as the weather here in Victoria is so unseasonably mild due to El Nino. I am using top soil mixed with vermiculite for the sowing material and the root container is currently sitting on a heat mat. Hopefully the first seedlings should start appearing within the week.

My bread adventures continue, as I am currently creating two whole wheat loaves of bread with a mixture of seeds inside the bread. As I grow in confidence it is fun to try different mixtures in order to vary the bread being created.