Blood Orange Marmalade

We discovered this little farm stand/bakery that sells local produce at great prices. They had some wonderful blood oranges (locally grown and pesticide free!), and since blood orange season is so brief I decided to preserve some by making blood orange marmalade. I used this recipe for my jam, as well as the recipe that the website referenced.

First, I washed my fruit, the jars, lids and bands, and sterilized all the other equipment and counter surfaces I would be using. A little bleach is useful at this point.
Next, I peeled the fruit to use in the marmalade. I don't like my marmalade to be too pithy, so I used a vegetable peeler so that I ended up with more zest than pith. I also sliced my zest into thin strips so that it wouldn't be too chunky in the final product. Next, I juiced my six pounds (!) of blood oranges and two lemons, straining the juice and retaining the seeds and membranes for later use. This took a very long time, and if you are lucky enough to have an electric juicer, this would be the time to use it. I only had my old glass juicer and muscle, so it took a while.

After all the juice was ready, I put it into a big pot, along with the peel, a bunch of water, two lemons cut into little triangle, and all the seeds and membranes wrapped up in cheesecloth. I boiled it for half an hour, then added a bunch of sugar.

Rather radioactive looking, isn't it? I also took the cheesecloth bag and squeezed out as much juice and pectin as I could. I didn't seem to get very much pectin out, so I added a box of it to the jam mixture later on.
My husband said it looked like I was wringing out a heart. I added this liquid to the juice mixture, and brought it to a boil. Once the jelly began to set, I poured it into sterilized jars and processed the jars in a hot water bath for ten minutes. The recipe made a lot of marmalade- I filled up ten 8 oz. jars, one pint jar, and had some leftover that I put in a bowl in the fridge. It's certainly a beautiful marmalade; it's a deep pinkish-ruby color with delicate orange strips of zest running through. From what I've tasted of the drips leftover in the pot, it should be tasty as well. I've never made jam before; hopefully it should set and seal alright- I heard promising "plink" sounds when I took the jars out of the hot water bath.

Second Stained Glass Project

So for my second stained glass project, I decided to do a wall hanging. I hunted around online and found a pattern for this lamp. I took part of it, cropped it to make it shorter, and used it for my pattern.


When doing stained glass, you need to have several copies of your pattern to work with. The one on the right (with the color) was my master. I took one of the other copies and used pattern shears to cut out my guide pieces.


You can see in this photo how the shears cut out a thin strip. This is to allow you extra room for the foil and solder. I double-checked my cut-out pattern pieces against my master pattern, and then glued them onto the glass I was using.


Next, I scored the glass with an oil-carbide glass cutter (visible on the lower left), then used running pliers to break the glass along the score. Once the piece was free of the larger sheet of glass, I trimmed it down with a couple of smaller breaks.


After I had all of my pieces roughly cut out, I ground them down until they matched the pattern. Next, I wrapped the edges in copper foil, applied flux, and soldered the edges.

Unfortunately, it was impossible for me to take pictures and solder simultaneously. Basically, I used tin/lead solder to join all the pieces, and made little wire loops to hang the piece on the wall. It's not perfect, but I'm pretty happy with it considering it was my first solo piece. It certainly brightens up the bathroom, at any rate.

Finished glass piece

As promised, here's my finished stain glass piece:


I'm still not sure how I want to hang it, since I need to wait for my teacher to get over his cold so he can show me what the options are. A chain and a suction cup, maybe? Also, I think I might hang it sideways instead of up-and-down. It's going in the kitchen window, above the sink. Next time I'll post about my wall-hanging glass project.