Lovely stuff

There are three kaffir lime trees in our garden, and I was mystified when one of them started producing oranges. It seems the limes are grafted on to root stock, and one of our trees has two trunks – one with the distinctive kaffir lime leaves and the other, the root stock, laden with oranges.
Curious to know what sort of oranges they are – with their squat shape and roughly-dimpled peel – I summoned help from Mr Google and discovered, to my utter delight, that they are seville oranges. The actual thing. Perfect fruit for marmalade.

So yesterday, the first day of winter (we also made celebration porridge), I went gathering, and boiling and bottling, and now I have nine jars of fabulous – if I do say so myself – bitter orange marmalade.

Midway through the process, after the whole fruit had been boiled alive for two hours, filling the house with the most fantastic sharply-orange scent, the recipe blithely said: " ... then add the juice of two lemons ...". WTF? It was after 6pm by now, so David and I nicked the front lamp off Will's bike as a torch and traipsed off into the park behind our house where I happen to know there is a magnificent lemon tree with branches hanging over someone's back fence. The marmalade was saved.

Next time, I'll get a funnel to help get the scalding hot lovely-stuff into the jars without getting it everywhere. Lots of stickiness in my kitchen this morning! But YUM. Seriously. A whole planet of difference from the factory stuff.