Our first foray into canning

We have a little kumquat tree that had a great little bounty to harvest this year. But there's only so many things you can make with kumquats. And we've had kumquat chicken twice recently...

On the advice of others in the garden blogosphere, we decided to make ours into marmalade. This was our first attempt at canning. But as I like to call it, organized chaos. Fun, but chaotic!

After many searches, I found a recipe online for which we had all of the ingredients. It seems as though people were kind of willy-nilly about following marmalade recipes when it came to kumquats. Perhaps it's because they're so acidic that a tried and true recipe isn't necessarily needed. So we halved the recipe I found - below. (I did lots of research on this, and this recipe given the sugar and acid content should be ok. Please note that I said here that it wasn't a printed recipe. Don't try it at home or get me into trouble.)

Kumquat-Pineapple Marmalade

2 heaping cups kumquats
1 lemon
1 1/4 cup water
1 cup crushed pineapple
3 1/4 cup sugar
1/8 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 box pectin

Julienne kumquats and lemons. Add to water and baking soda and simmer for 15 minutes until peels are tender. Add pineapple and pectin. Bring to a rolling boil and add the sugar. Bring back to a rolling boil and cook for 1 minute. Reduce heat to boiling, but not as hard. Skim foam for 7 minutes. (We didn't skim the foam.)



We never realized how involved canning was. Wow. It's a lot of work! And you have to have the recipe timing down, especially when it comes to pre-heating the lids and jars and having them ready right as the marmalade is ready. And you need to make sure all the jars fit into the final bath with their lids (ahem...Chris). And marmalade is sticky. Duh, I guess!

We had a little bit left over that Chris just stirred into some plain yoghurt, and it was delicious! I wasn't expecting it to be so pineapply, but it's still good.

We did the math, and 8 jars of this cost us about $18.50 (the only thing we didn't take into account was the water used or the cost of the tree. But all the way from the organic citrus fertilizer, the energy to make the marmalade, the canning supplies, and ingredients is how we calculated this cost). It came to about $2.30 per jar. Not that we're trying to be cheap, but really, we are.



Funny story

Chris and I used to live with his cousin Allan (best roommate we ever had, even though we lived in a haunted house, but that's ANOTHER story...). Allan and his wife have many of the same interests as Chris and I - such as gardening and the environment. Chris and Allan happen to work together at the same cell phone company, and are constantly sending one another texts and pictures of our gardens, construction projects, and other fun things. It's no wonder that after growing up together so they're so similar.

So Chris came home from work one day and declared:

"We're going to start a commune with Allan and Megan." (Allan's wife, currently pregnant with twins).

I thought it was funny, but we're all only half joking.

So the running joke between Allan and Chris at work is what they plan to do at the commune.

For example, this week's topics have included:

Who will be the leader of the commune, and perhaps two communes will be needed to satisfy political aspirations (as Chris puts it, a commune has to have one leader who brainwashes everyone)

An argument for the commune being above below the snow line

What kinds of milk creatures to keep (today's idea was goats, because supposedly a milking cow and her calf require a full 5 grazing acres themselves!). And they want sheep too. (I'm rolling my eyes here). Chris says they are for wool so *I* can make clothes. (I'm not planning on being Amish...)



And after we made the marmalade, Chris sent a text message to Allan that said:

"making marmalade. these canning skills will be invaluable at the commune. we could sell our artisan jams for much more than the cost of production"

I live with a comedian.