Second childhood

For annual ramblings, please scroll down to the 2 December entry

As happens more and more often of late, my mind wandered back the other day to my childhood.  My mother used to make jam and marmalade at home and taught me the skills.  Indeed, I still use her preserving pan.  Having recently run out of my 2022 batch of marmalade, I thought I was reduced to the shop-bought variety, which to me always seems rather bland and artificially set.  But then I remembered (and this is starting to read like an advertisement!) that Ma bought prepared Seville oranges in a can when the genuine home made stuff ran out.  

Lo and behold: Sainsbury’s still stock the brand that I remember from the 1950s, and preserving sugar, so we now have an emergency stock of sort-of-home-made marmalade to tide us over until the Seville oranges come in next month.  A brief scientific sampling exercise determines that it’s a good enough half-way house, though the fruit is rather more finely cut than is my wont.  Which brings back a more recent memory: trees in Malaga last December weighed down with bitter oranges.  I think Cunard and the customs might have cribbed at my schlepping home a suitcase full thereof.

I had other things on my mind this January, so couldn’t motivate myself to make marmalade.  Now that those preoccupations are dealt with, things will be different this coming January.  Gods willing, weather permitting and if the creek don’t rise, the production line will roll again.