The Tao of Handmade Marmalade

The first Spring weekend at Towerwater was very busy with the freshening of the broken apricot pip pathways. Raking the broken pips should be very Zen and I did contemplate raking designs and patterns and allow the experience to aid my meditation about the true meaning of life but if you have a mountain of pips the reality of moving that mountain does not allow for meditation. Although the freshly pipped pathways do bring a visual sense of order and pleasure to the garden and that is another form of meditation for me.

September brings the pleasure of citrus smells into the garden and the trees are a profusion of stages from blossom, young fruit and ripe fruit. On Sunday morning I could harvest, Seville, Valencia and Lemons. To harvest one's own fruit is to be in harmony with nature, a teaching of Taoism. The yellow and orange are alive with the brightness of sunny days and the intoxicating smell of orange blossoms hangs warm in the cool morning air.

First thing on Sunday morning I got everything ready for making marmalade before I ventured into the garden to harvest the ingredients. Got my trusted preserve recipe book "Lekker vir Later" and refreshed my brain with the basics of marmalade making. I could fill my white enamel bowl with the black edge to the brim with the most delicious oranges and lemons.

This year I was prepared and I bought an electric slicer that can cut anything from 0 -15mm. I could visualise the precision cut orange peels suspended in the golden syrup in my preserve jars. With the water and juice in the pot, the insides of the oranges tied in a muslin cloth and the sugar heating in the oven I was quickly going to slice up my citrus peel. The blade was set on very thin to produce "landbouskou" quality marmalade but the peels dit not work and the blade just zested the peel. I was not sure how I was going to give the "dysfunctional" slicer back to the store after shattering that dream.
In the end I had to put the hands back into my handmade marmalade the industrial age will have to wait. In the background Simon and Garfunkel was singing, “Slow down, you move too fast,
You got to make the morning last"
Marmalade is slow food and I love the smell of fresh orange oil bursting on my hands as I cut the orange peel as thin as possible. For me food is about the visual "ek moet sien hoe lekker dit is voor ek dit nog geproe het." That I had to say in Afrikaans because I could not translate it. As a lover of Marmalade it is the best to have the kitchen filled with the smell of cooking citrus peel. I can taste the Marmalade that it is going to produce. When I eat my Marmalade on toast I will also have this memory of cooking citrus peel.

In the end my peels were not the perfect precision sliced ones I had hope for but each of them are unique and when I put them on the breakfast table it is not just a pot of Marmalade I am offering you but also the abundance of my garden captured in a small glass jar.




"Soetlemoen" Marmalade and Seville Marmalade with Ginger

My kitchen with the first batch of Marmalade the second was still cooking

Lekker vir Later





“I got the blues thinking of the future, so I left off and made some marmalade. It's amazing how it cheers one up to shred oranges and scrub the floor.”

D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930)