Keep it under your hat
Jan. 30th, 2004 12:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ventaWell, if anyone was playing the shopping-basket game in the Co-Op tonight, they'd have been confused by me. I left with a big bottle of Jif lemon in one pocket, and two bags of sugar under my arm.
No, I wasn't planning a mammoth pancake session. I was making marmalade.
Y'see, JdB turned up to the rapper practice on Tuesday clutching a bag of seville oranges she'd picked up by mistake - I think she was after tangerines - trying to push them off onto a marmalade-maker. Well, no one else seemed willing...
And before any asks, yes, I know I don't like oranges, and I know I'm allergic to them. Marmalade is fine on both these counts.
Making marmalade is a process in several stages.
1. Go up into the attic to locate the preserving pan I rescued when we cleared out my Aunt's cellar last year. While up there, hunt around for the stash of empty jam jars - spend a while wondering why we seem to have an entirely disparate set of jars and lids. And, incidentally, if anyone has ever thought that roof insulation is a waste of time, five minutes in a loft in snowy January will soon convince you of the efficacy of the stuff.
2. Clean out said items. Jam jars went in the dishwasher. The preserving pan is lovely - old, made of solid brass (I think ? Something yellowy, but not orangey enough for copper. Are there any metallurgists listening ?), and gorgeously solid. It'd be at least a three-scene recovery if Jerry smacked Tom with it. However, having lived in a dank cellar it was not in the best of states. Two brillo pads down the line it was a lot more healthy.
3. Critical stage: phone the Cookery Advisory Service. The recipes I'd found at home looked different to the one I'm used to observing/helping with, so I wanted consoling advice. Fortunately it turns out that if you buy a one kilo bag of oranges, then one goes mouldy, you are left with exactly two pounds of oranges - the quantity the CAS's recipe states. So I didn't even have to do any sums.
4. Cook the oranges until they're dead. Our house now smells of one of the things I remember from being little - cooking sevilles. Despite the fact that peeling a normal orange smells foul (and I share an office with two inveterate orange-eaters), this is a proto-marmalade smell and it's lovely.
5. Slice all the oranges up - by this time they are incredibly squashy, and it's actually all quite fun.
6. Realise at a resonably critical (but not as critical as it could have been) stage that you have no waxed circles to put in the tops of the jars - and no waxed paper to make any either. I don't want mouldy marmalade a few weeks down the line. So, bung all the fuit/pulp/juice in the fridge to await stages 6 through, oooh, about 9 or 10 at a later date. Not ideal, but the CAS informs me it's a reasonable way of going on.
Things I have learned this evening: it's not spelled "marmelade".
Stage 4 is pretty time consuming, so during it I answered![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
nalsa's questions, cooked dinner, ate it, faffed, sorted through my post, did a bunch of other things that really aren't that interesting... And did a bit more work. Reviewing technical documentation for the insides of a web browser while cooking marmalade. Let no one say I'm not varied in my passtimes :)
No, I wasn't planning a mammoth pancake session. I was making marmalade.
Y'see, JdB turned up to the rapper practice on Tuesday clutching a bag of seville oranges she'd picked up by mistake - I think she was after tangerines - trying to push them off onto a marmalade-maker. Well, no one else seemed willing...
And before any asks, yes, I know I don't like oranges, and I know I'm allergic to them. Marmalade is fine on both these counts.
Making marmalade is a process in several stages.
1. Go up into the attic to locate the preserving pan I rescued when we cleared out my Aunt's cellar last year. While up there, hunt around for the stash of empty jam jars - spend a while wondering why we seem to have an entirely disparate set of jars and lids. And, incidentally, if anyone has ever thought that roof insulation is a waste of time, five minutes in a loft in snowy January will soon convince you of the efficacy of the stuff.
2. Clean out said items. Jam jars went in the dishwasher. The preserving pan is lovely - old, made of solid brass (I think ? Something yellowy, but not orangey enough for copper. Are there any metallurgists listening ?), and gorgeously solid. It'd be at least a three-scene recovery if Jerry smacked Tom with it. However, having lived in a dank cellar it was not in the best of states. Two brillo pads down the line it was a lot more healthy.
3. Critical stage: phone the Cookery Advisory Service. The recipes I'd found at home looked different to the one I'm used to observing/helping with, so I wanted consoling advice. Fortunately it turns out that if you buy a one kilo bag of oranges, then one goes mouldy, you are left with exactly two pounds of oranges - the quantity the CAS's recipe states. So I didn't even have to do any sums.
4. Cook the oranges until they're dead. Our house now smells of one of the things I remember from being little - cooking sevilles. Despite the fact that peeling a normal orange smells foul (and I share an office with two inveterate orange-eaters), this is a proto-marmalade smell and it's lovely.
5. Slice all the oranges up - by this time they are incredibly squashy, and it's actually all quite fun.
6. Realise at a resonably critical (but not as critical as it could have been) stage that you have no waxed circles to put in the tops of the jars - and no waxed paper to make any either. I don't want mouldy marmalade a few weeks down the line. So, bung all the fuit/pulp/juice in the fridge to await stages 6 through, oooh, about 9 or 10 at a later date. Not ideal, but the CAS informs me it's a reasonable way of going on.
Things I have learned this evening: it's not spelled "marmelade".
Stage 4 is pretty time consuming, so during it I answered
nalsa's questions, cooked dinner, ate it, faffed, sorted through my post, did a bunch of other things that really aren't that interesting... And did a bit more work. Reviewing technical documentation for the insides of a web browser while cooking marmalade. Let no one say I'm not varied in my passtimes :)
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Ahem!
Date: 2004-01-30 02:04 am (UTC)See, I said it. And it's "pastimes" :)
Any idea what actually changes from nasty, horrible, allergy inducing orange to nice, lovely, crunchy marmalade?
Re: Ahem!
Date: 2004-01-30 02:05 am (UTC)Re: Ahem!
Date: 2004-01-30 02:16 am (UTC)Does that affect the smell as well? (Since normal orange smells foul but proto-marmalade smell and it's lovely) I don't really notice the difference in the smell of oranges and marmalade. Well, I s'pose marmalade smell doesn't carry as much, presumably because the more volatile components are already removed. But it's essentially the same smell.
Re: Ahem!
Date: 2004-01-30 02:39 am (UTC)Re: Ahem!
Date: 2004-01-30 02:50 am (UTC)I reckon I could tell the difference between raw orange and cooked seville, though, without knowing which was which.
Re: Ahem!
Date: 2004-01-30 02:50 am (UTC)I, however, am insane.
I don't know what happened there.
Re: Ahem!
Date: 2004-01-30 03:07 am (UTC)That I believe. I'm wondering whether the fact that you categorise one as pleasant and the other as unpleasant follows from the ends they achieve rather than intrinsic properties of the chemicals involved - do you remember whether you liked the smell of cooking sevilles the first time you ever came across it, for example?
Re: Ahem!
Date: 2004-01-30 03:35 am (UTC)Because my mum has always made marmalade, the first encounter with the smell of cooking oranges was probably way before I was properly "aware" of it.
To further confuse the issue, I didn't used to dislike oranges nearly so much, either. Which is strange - mostly I've got more tolerant as I've got older to things I didn't like when little (like peas). I think oranges are the only thing I've got more anti.
Re: Ahem!
Date: 2004-01-30 02:51 am (UTC)If the volatile compounds being boiled away & the proteins (orange has protein?) being denatured are generally inextricably linked, it's perfectly sensible for the volatile compounds to be associated with 'nasty', because past experience has shown that close association with them causes bad things.
(On a side-note, never ask me to cook curry/chilli when I have flu/heavy cold - I will cook something hot enough to terrify the illness away, because I cook instinctively by smell and forget to compensate for a blocked nose!)
Re: Ahem!
Date: 2004-01-30 02:59 am (UTC)I should add here that oranges never actually make me ill. They just give me a mild skin rash. It's sifficiently minor that I'd probably be prepared to put up with it if I really liked the orangey little buggers.
Not liking them is a far more major factor in my life than allergy :)
However: things you don't like are much more tastable than things you do. For example, I don't like parsley. People will swear blind that you "can't taste the parsley" in something. They're wrong. And before someone says psychosomatic again, there has been extensive testing of this with people telling me things don't contain parsley when they do - and I can still taste it.
Re: Ahem!
Date: 2004-01-30 10:13 am (UTC)Re: Ahem!
Date: 2004-01-30 02:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-01-30 02:05 am (UTC)Re:
Date: 2004-01-30 02:49 am (UTC)But where's the fun in that ? And since the entire thing was to dispose of some sevilles... :)
no subject
Date: 2004-01-30 02:46 am (UTC)Kids these days, no idea why these things are called preserves.
Re:
Date: 2004-01-30 02:48 am (UTC)Re:
Date: 2004-01-30 02:57 am (UTC)I have no evidence for this obviously. I'm just sitting here waiting for my breakfast to be made for me ;-)
Re:
Date: 2004-01-30 03:45 am (UTC)Funny? In what way? Never had any trouble at Chez GreenMan and we never do the waxed lid business, just screw the lid on while hot.
Mind you we go through a put every couple of weeks so maybe it isn't around long enough to go "funny"
Re:
Date: 2004-01-30 03:55 am (UTC)I expect my jam to last years, unopened. Literally.
Re:
Date: 2004-01-30 10:17 am (UTC)I expect my jam to last years, unopened. Literally.
Clearly this is only because you've never lived with me. Food doesn't last that long in my vicinity, I assure you.
no subject
Date: 2004-01-30 02:57 am (UTC)no subject
IANA metallurgist, but that sounds like a description of custard to me. No, wait, brass, I meant brass.
Is the colour anything like this one ?
Re:
Date: 2004-01-30 03:01 am (UTC)Pretty much spot on, yup.
Remind me never to eat your custard :)
no subject
Date: 2004-01-30 03:33 am (UTC)Re:
Date: 2004-01-30 04:16 am (UTC)