Lemon Marmalade Wiki Wiki

 That's fast in Hawaiian.  Of course, faster would be just buying some.  However, as the lemons are dropping off our tree, home made marmalade is a really good thing.  This recently found recipe uses a mandolin and a pressure cooker to speed things up.  I'm going to do another batch today, Lord willing, and the creek don't rise.  It is raining right now, but may clear up later for picking fruit. And, just so you know, these are not Meyer lemons, they're full-bodied, flavorful real ones :) Sorry all you Meyer fans.  I had a friend ask for some of mine recently, as all she had were the other kind.

The Year of the Kumquat

 A very small portion of them shown here.

When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade, or in my case Lemon Mead, and when you've been blessed with a load of kumquats, you need to be creative with them.  We haven't really had a whole year of them, it just sounded good, and sometimes feels that way.  Bob has had a strange obsession with the fruit ever since Thanksgiving when I made a Cranberry Kumquat Sauce.  I know it was only partly my delicious creation, with the other driving factor being humor.  Really, the name is not that funny.  He started with Facebook posting a W.C. Fields film clip on kumquats.  Yes, that was funny, ha ha ha.  Then Googling and posting all sorts of information on the fruit, health benefits, recipes and etc.  And which has caused other people to give him kumquats.

Bob notwithstanding, I still needed to deal with the second large bagful of those tasty little citrus, thanks due to Nancy, whom some of you might remember from my fabulous post on chocolate making.  First up was marmalade, which I simplified.  I did not like the sound of most of those lengthy recipes.  So, rather than mincing them all, one at a time, I tossed the halved, seeded fruit into a food processor and voila.

The Fruit that Grew Up

Finally off the little tree and into my kitchen, our long-awaited Citron Hand (sometimes known as a Buddha's Hand) was ready to use.  I have to say it was a bit disappointing though.  Perhaps, being the first fruit of the tree, and slightly stunted, was not very aromatic, just sitting on the counter.  The information I had dug up suggested that it would perfume an entire room.  Not this baby.  Oh well, the rind was good, and I used it in a few dishes, culminating in jars of Pineapple Marmalade.

I put the jar on the left more in the light, so you get a better idea of the color.  Basically, the recipe is just pineapples, chopped fine, the citron, minced - about 1/4 cupful, lemon juice and sugar.  Boiled it up til thick enough.  The citron hand is delicious in there.  Tangy and flavorful.  And the nice thing is, you can use all the rind, as the white pith is not bitter.

You may, or may not remember when I raved on and on about my new tree, with its one little baby fruit.  There were other starts, but they fell off rather quickly.  This one grew up to be a big (well a little size challenged) boy.  Just like a good mother, I took pictures along the way.  The tree (still a sapling) has been plagued by mites or aphids all year, but a treatment of neem oil seems to have taken care of it.