In which the garden contributes to the Covid "vacation" larder

First week of May - REPORT

Planted:  squashes, cucumbers, corn

Sprouted and Growing: peas, potatoes, tomatoes, garlic, herbs

Blooming: fruit trees, berry bushes, rosemary bushes

We Are Eating: parsley, cilantro, chives, overwintered greens, rhubarb, and

SO MANY EGGS.

The rhubarb is the big production issue at the moment.  

It took me about ten minutes to pick about 8 pounds of rhubarb.

The eggs are easy to distribute among friends and neighbors--neither of the houses closest to us keep chickens, and they very politely don't complain about the roosters.  

The hens lay about a dozen eggs each day this time of year

Rhubarb is a little more problematic. Almost everybody already has rhubarb.  

Remarkably, our Southern Neighbors don't seem to have any. This whole area used to be part of the dairy farm belonging to Mrs. Southern Neighbor's gramma, and I figure our rhubarb is descended from gramma's own rhubarb, so I delivered a huge bundle to their house a few days ago.  I took them eggs and chocolate-chip oatmeal cookies also...and they returned with a gift of elk sausage and a bear roast b/c Mr. Southern Neighbor is a tribal bow-hunter.  I love my neighbors!

But, still, there is a lot of rhubarb that hasn't been given away.  We decided to try something new.  

RHUBARB-ORANGE MARMALADE*

Ingredients:

2.5 pounds finely chopped rhubarb (we used closer to 4 pounds)

2 oranges (we only had 1, a reddish-orange cara cara orange)

little bit of water

6 cups of sugar

packet of pectin (the "regular" kind, not the low-sugar kind)

*Recipe is from the Ball Blue Book , published by the people who make Ball Canning Jars.  There is also a digital edition of the Ball Blue Book.  I rarely recommend buying a book instead of borrowing it from a library, but in this case, if you are going to make more than 2 batches of anything in your entire life, just buy the book.  

START by filling up the hot-water canner and getting the water to boil.  

We almost always forget to start with this,
and then we're standing around waiting for water to boil.  

Chop the rhubarb.  The recipe says "dice", but I cut it a bit smaller than "dice."

half-inch chunks

The recipe didn't specify this, but after chunking the rhubarb we ran it through the food processor.

Three or four zings with the processor set on "blend"

Juice the orange and measure the juice.  If it's less than a cup of juice, top it up to 1 cup with water.

Remove the white stuff (pith) from inside the orange peel and slice the remaining peel into thin slivers.  Throw the zinged rhubarb and slivered orange peel into the pot (I had to change to the bigger soup pot b/c we made a big batch).

Bring it up to a simmer, and allow it to simmer, covered, for about 3 minutes "or until rhubarb is tender."  If you zinged up the rhubarb to make it very small, it will get tender quicker. 

Add the pectin.

Bring the mixture to a boil, then add the sugar and stir until dissolved.  Return to a rolling boil.

Boil hard 1 minute, stirring constantly so it won't burn.

Remove from heat, skim foam if necessary.

Ladle hot jam into hot jars, leaving 1/4 in headspace.  Add the caps, and process 10 minutes in the boiling water canner.

Pretty!

Serve on toast...or if you live here, serve on Jim's homemade biscuits.   

the best!

Of course, you can also share this with the neighbors, too.