Homemade Marmalade

Last week, we had our first big freeze of the winter. The weatherman predicted it would get down to 18 degrees on Tuesday night, so that evening Rob and I went out and picked all our kumquats—20 pounds of kumquats—so they wouldn’t be damaged by the cold.

Since we had 20 pounds of kumquats sitting around the house, we decided to make marmalade. We’d never preserved anything before, so this was a pretty big deal. Sunday was entirely devoted to marmalade madness. We didn’t know what we were doing, so we had pots boiling over all day, and sugar caramelizing on the stovetop, and we kept contaminating our jars and having to re-boil them. The floor became unbelievably sticky, and kumquats were rolling around underfoot. The air was perfumed with burned sugar and citrus.

But in the end, it worked! We made marmalade, and it is so delicious! It’s sunny and sweet and tangy, and it has the power to turn ordinary toast into a wonderful, exotic dessert. I wish you could taste it.