Para Carmen

Winter Preserving

This is my first winter that I have done citrus preserving on a large scale. We've done a bit with candied peels and liqueurs. I don't remember whence the inspiration came but I started with a Honey Lemon Marmalade from my favorite preserving book: The River Cottage Preserves Handbook.

That led into Blood Orange Marmalade which is so gorgeous that I must make it for gifts every year. The recipe is a bit on the sweet side. I then tried their Seville Orange Marmalade which is divine in a completely different way. I now want to mix the Seville Oranges with the Blood Oranges to see if I can find my perfect marmalade recipe.

We also did a batch of Orange Pomander Brandy from this cookbook which I found at the last Eugene Public Library Book Sale. It looks beautiful, but we won't know for another month or so how it tastes.

For breakfast this morning I had an americano, a blueberry kale banana smoothie and an english muffin with three sunny marmalades.

SMART

Pablo and I met because of Start Making A Reader Today - the non-profit I worked with after college. I was a volunteer coordinator in a low-income elementary school. He came in once a week to read books with Samantha and Efrain.
Tomorrow 4G IPhones go on sale via Verizon to new customers. I just read in the NYT: By the end of the year, one in two Americans will own a smartphone, compared with just one in 10 during the summer of 2008, according to a recent report from the research firm Nielsen. That means that for the first time in the United States, there will be more smartphones than feature phones in use.
I have no idea what a "smartphone" is but the chances are pretty good that I'll own one within the next few months.
HA!