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WOOT. My first canning challenge for the Tigress Can Jam is complete! Can we please talk about awesome this is?!?

*crickets*

… So that’s a no? Darn. That’s okay… I got the proper amount of excitement from my two BFFs, Sam and Anna, through email.

Me: I haven’t posted about it yet but did you both know that I SUCCESSFULLY CANNED something the other day? It was totes awesome.

(Anna and Sam jabber on about such important topics as Staub’s cheaper line of cookware for BloodBath&Beyond, the undiscovered awesomeness of hardware stores, and the chances of there being a shirtless Channing Tatum scene or two or four in his new movie.)

Me: excuse me, neither of you expressed the appropriate amount of fangirl squeeing that i successfully canned something without 1) burning myself 2) burning my husband or 3) burning my house down.

Anna: SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Sam: i guess i don’t fully understand the danger of canning. it involves boiling water and tongs, right?

Me: true, i guess it’s not exactly James Bond material. i guess the danger is more that you won’t get the proper seal and that you’ll accidentally grow crazy botulism in the jar?

Sam: aaah so a delayed death. report back in a few months =)

So yeah, assuming that I’m still writing posts in a few months… we can assume everything I canned this time around was safe to eat. Nothing like a little suspense to liven up the blog posts, right? I actually planned it like this… it will be like a soap opera… it will take 4 weeks for 1 pot of coffee to brew and you’ll have to come back every day to see if I died of botulism spores or if I was stabbed by my neighbor who suffocated me with the wet filter full of coffee grounds.

For the first month of the Tigress Can Jam, we are canning citrus! Very exciting, non? I couldn’t help myself when I went to the grocery store and there were heaps of blood oranges for $1.50 a pound. And then there were Meyer lemons on sale for $1.25 a pound, so I got a bunch of those too… not sure what I’m going to do with the rest of them yet. Having never made marmalade, I was thinking that it a couple of hours devoted to making a crapload of marmalade would be a relaxing activity.

… yeah. Not so much. Dude, making marmalade is HARD. You’ve got to juice the oranges (which I did by hand) and then cut out the pith, then julienne the zest, and after all that work… you get to cook it. However, what I didn’t expect was how easy the actual canning part of the process went. Go figure. I was so scared that I was going to screw something up and then it turned out to be crazy easy! And of course I had to share my excitement with the world over Twitter:

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click to enlarge my twitter enthusiasm

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… because I was so proud of myself. I’ve never canned anything before and canning is necessary knowledge for an aspiring hippie like myself. Unfortunately my first marmalade endeavor only yielded three 8oz jars of marmalade, which was a wee bit less than I was expecting. But I still have lots of oranges left, so I might make another batch (or something similar) tonight.

PS. I was only able to make this marmalade because my super-awesome father-in-law, Mike, sent me a care package of brand-new canning equipment! He’s getting a jar in the mail this weekend. Hope it’s actually good!

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Blood Orange and Meyer Lemon Marmalade

Adapted from The Hungry Engineer and Simply Recipes

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Ingredients:
3 pounds blood oranges, washed and dried
4 cups water
2 Meyer lemons
2-3 cups sugar

Equipment:
Medium saucepan
candy thermometer
Canning pot
4 8-0z mason jars with lids and rings

Directions:
Scrub the oranges clean. Cut the oranges in half and juice them, one by one, over a strainer until you have 2 cups of juice. Set aside the juice. As you juice the oranges, set aside the seeds and membranes, as they will be used for making pectin. For each juiced orange half, use a spoon to dig out the pith as much as you can. You may find it easier to lay pieces of the peel on the cutting board and to slide a knife between the pith and the peel, similar to how you would de-skin a piece of fish.

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Cut up both Meyer lemons into 8 segments each, and cut each segment crosswise into small triangles. Remove any seeds from the lemons and add to the orange seeds and membranes. Pull all the seeds and membranes from both the oranges and lemons into a square of cheesecloth (at least 4 layers thick) and tie the fabric together with kitchen twine to make a small bag.

(Note: At this point, if you plan to can the marmalade for shelf-stability, then put a small plate in the freezer to chill.)

Place the lemon and orange juices in a medium-sized pot, and add the julienned peels and lemon pieces and the water. Tie the cheesecloth bag to the pot’s handle on one side, making sure that the bag is sitting in the marmalade. As the seeds/membranes cook, the pectin will leach out of the bag and into the marmalade. Bring mixture to a boil and let cook, uncovered, for 30 minutes. Remove the bag and let sit until cool enough to touch.

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Pour the fruit mixture into a measuring cup and measure how much fruit mixture you have. For each cup of fruit mixture, add 7/8 cup of sugar. (I had 3 cups of fruit, so I added 2 1/4 cup sugar.) Put the sugar and fruit mixture back in the pot. Once the pectin bag is cool, squeeze the bag to get any extra pectin out of the bag.

(Note: At this point, if you plan to can your marmalade, sterilize your glass jars. Wash each jar in hot water, and put the jars on a baking sheet. Put the jars in a 200° fahrenheit oven and let “cook” in oven for 10 minutes.)

Add the pectin to the sugar and fruit mixture. Bring the mixture to a boil over medium-high heat, and cook until the marmalade reaches a temperature (as measured by a candy thermometer) of 220 – 222° fahrenheit. As an alternative to using a candy thermometer, you can utilize “the wrinkle test.” For the wrinkle test, chill a plate in the freezer while you are prepping and cooking the marmalade so it’s fully chilled when you are ready to test the marmalade. Put a small spoonful of marmalade on the plate, wait 5 seconds, and push the marmalade with your finger (it should be cool from sitting on the plate for those 5 seconds). If the surface of the marmalade wrinkles at all, it’s time to can the marmalade. If the marmalade is runny on the plate and/or doesn’t wrinkle when you push it, then it’s not ready to can; cook it for a few more minutes and try again.

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To process the jars of marmalade, bring a small pan of water to boil and drop in the flat lids. Let them soak in the hot water for 5 minutes to soften the seal. Fill each jar up with marmalade, leaving 1/4 inch space between the lid and the top of the jam. Run a knife around the inside of the jars, to make sure that no air bubbles are sitting between the marmalade and the jar. Wipe the outside of the rims of the jars to make sure that no sticky marmalade will break the seal. Put the lid on the jar, and screw on the ring/band to close the jar. Put the jars in a large pot of boiling water (do not lay them down sideways, they must be processed standing upright) and cover with water such that there is at least 1 inch of water above the tops of the jars. Bring water in pan to boil, and process cans for 10 minutes. Use tongs to get the jars out of the hot water and leave them on the counter to dry.

Listen for the “pop” sound as the jars’ vacuum seal is created. Celebrate by opening a jar even though you just spent upwards of 4 hours making it shelf-stable.

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Now Playing in the Kitchenette: The Cribs / We Share the Same Skies - please to be loving this band with me. trust.

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