Zesty Orange Marmalade

What a wonderful day we had at the County Cooperative extension office. A few months back when i had the pleasure of taking the ServSafe course with the Cooperative extension office i also met the instructor Megan Ray. Well, let me tell ya she is a wonderful instructor and a joy to work with. The CoOperative extension office offers lots of wonderful classes and ties in the Farmers, Consumers and Agriculture folks to enrich our community.
  I love to can and so Megan and i set up a date to get together and cook and can. Megan is preparing to offer a series of classes on canning and the proper usage of either a hot water bath or pressure canner for proper application.
  Well, I took all my tools and we worked on a great batch of Orange Marmalade. My good friend Susie Davis came over and helped with the cutting and constant stirring of the pot. We first started with peeling, dicing the peel and cooking to make a wonderful Zest. Megan filled the jars with a little water and put them in the oven to sterilize them, she also put all of the rings and lids in boiling water to sterilize them as well. We all cut oranges while the Zest was cooking and talked about future plans for our county and built one great wish list.
  The Zest was drained and the water saved, we call it the reserve water, to put back into the Marmalade as it was cooking since it is full of natural Pectin. Well we ended up with about 16 cups of beautiful cut up oranges in the large cooking pot. We then added the Zest, reserve liquid plus a little more to make up about 10 cups of total liquid. I personally like to add a little French Vanilla to make the Marmalade taste a little Dreamy, also i like to put in a few maraschino cherries to add more color. The jars remain in the oven while the cooking process is being completed and just prior to filling removed from the oven. The Marmalade takes about thirty minutes of a rolling boil to cook and when this is at the last stages you have to skim off some of the foam.
  While the Marmalade is cooking i like to set a little bit of marmalade on a plate and place in the freezer to check the set of the gel. Alright i'll admit i also like to taste it along the way and eat any of the leftover oranges.
  As everything was cooking and the sweet aroma filled the air we also got the bonus of all of the ladies that work in the building to stop by. I love this part of cooking, the conversation and aroma leads to great ideas and future plans.

  Well it was ready, we started to fill the jars and uh oh...ran out of jars..Well Megan made a mad dash to the store and saved the day. We ended up with 28 jars of beautiful Orange Marmalade and future plans to meet next week to put together a four week course on canning. So i will leave for now on this note..Remember..What " Can" you do..