Hot Water Bath Canning

FIJ Challenge: Orange Peach Marmalade

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I’ve signed up to do the Food in Jars Mastery Challenge! You can learn more about it here. January’s challenge was to make marmalade, and I was happy to have this excuse to stretch my skills… I haven’t made marmalade since I tried putting up a carrot and lemon type about 14 years ago! At that time, I was new to canning on my own, and the peels were tough, so I never went near the stuff again.  But! I really like marmalade. 


My local grocery store had organic oranges on sale, of unknown variety, and I combined them with some of the organic peaches I froze back in the summer. The recipe I used as a guide was Marisa’s strawberry lemon marmalade from Simple Bites. 


I used 1 pound of oranges (3 fruits), 1 pound of sliced and peeled peaches, and a pound of sugar. It took a long time to thicken up; I think next time, I shouldn’t add the two cups of water, and just let the juice from the peaches soften the orange peel. 


The set is a bit soft, but the flavour is DELICIOUS. I left the peels in rather thick slices, yet they are nice and tender. The only other thing I’d change is maybe reduce the sugar, and/or add some lemon juice for a bit of a fresher taste.

Tomatillo time!

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Tomatillo time!


I bought several pounds of tomatillos from a farmer friend, and prepped them for preserving. Usually I’d ferment some, but I had the right amount to make a few batches of my favourite canned salsa, so they all went into that instead.


 I use Ziedrich’s recipe from The Joy of Pickling, omitting the hot peppers, using lemon juice instead of lime, and adding a bit of dried chili flakes. 


I also saved a spoonful or so of seeds, because this plant grows very well in our climate and my love for salsa verde is quite deep!


The soil in my garden is pretty poor, and my tomatoes were an utter failure this year… But hopefully I can get the ground healthy enough for at least a small crop of tomatillos next summer.