Oranges, Anyone?

Thanks to Joe DeLauro*, Dennis and I have spent almost three weeks making orange marmalade. Joe, who sells citrus fruit from his 40-acre grove at the St. Francis Square Farmers Market, kindly gave me two grocery bags full of pesticide-free Seville oranges. (Joe usually doesn’t harvest the Seville oranges because no one wants them.) He was pleased when we took him two jars of marmalade the following week.

Altogether we have made more than four gallons of the stuff. Here’s Dennis, preparing to seal one of the more than 30 jars we have stored away. We’ve also filled several bowls, eating some and giving some to friends.

Finally we had enough of making marmalade so I looked into other ways of using the remaining oranges. It turns out that Seville oranges make the most flavorful orange zest, so I grated just four oranges to get plenty of zest to dry for later use in recipes such as panna cotta.

I also found instructions for making orange cleaning solution by soaking orange rinds in white vinegar for two weeks. I’ve long used a product called Citrusolv for heavy cleaning. Now I won’t need to buy that any more.

Thanks again, Joe. We hope to see you next year!

*For more about Joe, a career rock musician, see http://www.tucsonlocalmedia.com/el_sol/article_ea40f98e-c67a-543e-b832-4279629e9cb4.html#.Vtnd78-0wVc.email

Copyright 2016 by Shirley Domer