The Bestest Ever Homemade Marmalade

Mmmmmm – how delicious do those oranges look! Well if you eat them raw then they're pretty disgusting as they're Seville Oranges and quite bitter – but they're probably the best orange ever to make marmalade with. They're only around for a few weeks of the year so get down to the grocers and grab yourself a basket – you won't be sorry. I try and make a big batch of marmalade every year to last me until they come around again.

I always thought making jam/marmalade sounded a bit daunting. All those stories from Grandma about boiling sugar and how terribly dangerous it all is. Nah – that's all rubbish, it's dead easy and you won't have ever tasted marmalade like it. It really is light years ahead of shop bought stuff.

So first things first – get to your grocers and grab yourself a kilogram of Seville Oranges. Chop them in half and squeeze all the juice out of them and then cut all the peel – chunky or fine – the choice is yours. Don't cut any of the pith off – that's the bit that contains most of the pectin which is what helps the marmalade set. Put everything in a bowl together with 2.5 pints of water and leave to soak overnight.

Transfer everything in to a large pan and bring to the boil. (Before you do anything else put a couple of saucers into the fridge now, you'll need them later.) Simmer for around 2 hours with the lid on or until the peel is soft – this will vary depending on how thick you've cut it. Just take a little bit out onto a chopping board and you should be able to squish it with your fingers really easily. Make sure you let it cool down first!

While you're simmering you'll need to sterilise some jars. There are various ways to do this – for ease you can put them in the dishwasher but I generally use my steamer – pop them in for half an hour.
OK – so after you've boiled for 2 hours you then need to add 75ml of lemon juice which is approx one lemon and 2kg of demerara sugar. Jeez – it's an awful lot of sugar – I didn't realise how much actually went into jam and marmalade – it's a bit of shocker! Stir the sugar to make sure it's fully dissolved and now you want to get your marmalade to a rolling boil.
It'll look a little like the shot above – lots of foamy bubbles. Don't stir when you get to this point as it'll reduce the temperature of your marmalade and take longer for it to reach setting point. You need to boil for approximately 20-25 minutes.

Now – this is the trickiest bit I think. Trying to work out if it's reached setting point or not. This is where the saucers in the fridge come in. After about 20-25 minutes take one of your saucers out and drop a little of the marmalade onto it, leave it to cool for a minute or so and then if it's reached setting point it should crinkle when you push it with your finger – like below. Can you see that?
Leave it for 10-15 minutes to cool down and then pot into your steralised jars. Hey presto home-made marmalade. I promise, you won't look back.

RSPB – "Wildlife in Crisis"

With the extreme cold weather looking like it's going to continue for another week or so our wildlife is really suffering. The RSPB have launched emergency action to help our birds survive the cold snap. Here's the four point plant.

1) The RSPB is organizing emergency feeding of several threatened birds at locations across the UK. Species being helped with this direct action include: bitterns and cirl buntings – all threatened species vulnerable to the impacts of extreme cold

2) The Society along with other organisations, including the British Trust for Ornithology, Natural England and the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust, is urging the public not to disturb flocks of wetland birds, including ducks, geese, swans and wading birds. Disturbance causes these birds to expend energy they cannot replace, pushing them to the brink.

3) Britain’s gardens are an increasingly important refuge for several species of threatened species, especially during icy conditions. Several red list birds use gardens regularly in winter, including house sparrow, starling and song thrush. The icy weather will bring further red-list birds to gardens, including redpolls, yellowhammers and tree sparrows. To help these birds the RSPB is urging as many people as possible to feed garden birds.

4) The Society is urging Britain’s farmers to spare a thought for threatened birds, such as corn buntings and yellowhammers, on their land by putting out supplementary food, especially in the form of grain tailings or residue’s from last year’s crops.

You can read the full RSPB article here.

Don't Forget to Feed the Birdies

Just a little reminder that although we're all back at work today (groan) the birdies will still be struggling for food in this cold weather. If you've been feeding them over the Christmas holiday's then please try and carry on.

If they've got used to food in your garden then they'll expend precious energy flying to a guaranteed food source and so it really is important to still put food out for them. Any old scraps will do, you don't need to spend money on expensive seeds – left overs are great. In this cold weather they needs lots of fat to get them through the cold nights so things like cheese, left over pastry (mince pies are a great treat!) yorkshire puddings etc. Bread is OK to feed them as long as you put other things out with it too, whilst it fills them up it doesn't give them the nutrients they need so try and vary what tit bits you give them.

Today I put out a left over bit of pizza – I didn't give them the crust just the nice bits with lots of cheese on, an old bit of cheddar and some mealworms. The RSPB has a whole heap of advice on what, when, how and why to feed the birds here.

http://www.rspb.org.uk/advice/helpingbirds/feeding/index.aspx

Mr and Mrs.Blackbird have been feasting today, the Grey Wagtail has made several other appeareances (not the best picture I know but I wanted to show everyone he does actually exist!) and our resident Dunnocks have been out and about, a nice shot here of one hiding in the bushes.

Birdtastic

OK, I admit – this post is not technically about the garden – or even about the wildlife in our garden. But I have managed to convince myself that I can stretch the topic of birds in our garden to include – well – birds anywhere.

As a birthday present for one half of the little gardeners we both went on a Falconry Insight Day over at Leeds Castle. What a truly exhilarating experience!

We started off with the smaller birds – Oscar the Barn Owl and then went up in size. Ozzy was next, a brilliant little character.

Maggie the Vulture was next and although Vultures get a bit of a hard rap she was so graceful when she flew. Off for a spot of lunch and then out hunting with the two Harris Hawks, Brock and Fosters. We had a beautiful walk through the Leeds Castle estate whilst Brock and Fosters kept their eyes peeled for rabbits and squirrels.

It was such a wonderful day and I can't thank the Hawking Centre enough, the two Falconers Kelly and Mark were brilliant and we learnt such a lot about all the different birds they keep. They're going to be moving from Leeds Castle to the beautiful Doddington Place at the end of February – they'll still be running lots of different courses so if you fancy a brilliant day out then have a look at their website.

http://www.thehawkingcentre.co.uk

Rain, rain go away

This is the view out of the bird watching window today...

Although not conducive to the best bird photography you'll ever see, it has however seen a flurry of activity today. The garden has been teeming with birds all day long. Infact, probably the busiest I've seen all year and as a result I've managed to add two birds to the 2009 list.

Probably something to do with the fact that I put out a nice yorkshire pudding and some left-over stuffing from yesterday's dinner – Mr Blackbird is enjoying that immensely!

So in no particular order, the list today is: (all linked to RSPB bird identifier for more info)

Blackbird (Male and Female)
Goldfinches
Robin
Dunnock
Wren (new visitor!)
Magpie
Pete the Pigeon (garden regular)
Blue Tit
Great Tit
Grey Wagtail (new visitor and very very chuffed about this one :-)

Welcome Back

I know it seems that the only birdie pictures I ever post on here are Goldfinches, it's probably true but they're so small and perfect, and look at all those wonderful colours. Just beautiful.

Anyways, if you recall back in the summer we had a wonderful little Goldfinch family, Gary and his Mrs and then six or so weeks later a whole family, three babies I think it was. Well, they were regular visitors for about two months or so and then 'poof' – they disappeared. I just assumed they were off on their summer holidays to Africa on winter migration. But ah-ha the RSPB bird identifier came in handy again. Not all of them migrate, about a third of them stay here in the UK over winter, so of the 300,000 or so Goldfinches in the UK there's very likely to be around a 100,000 that stay put.

Well jolly good show, is all I can say. The piccie above was of just one of them, we had six on the feeders yesterday. Now all I need to find out is where they went for that two month period? The only thing I can think is that with all the autumn berries around they didn't need the seeds from the feeders?

My my what a big clove you have!

Ok, I admit. Right now this clove of garlic, well, it looks like any other clove of garlic. But, oh my goodness. This garlic isn't just any old garlic, this is Elephant Garlic. And by jove, it sure is elephant. I've never seen anything like it!

Here's a shot of it against a normal sized garlic clove.
Now can you see what I mean! It's huge! Technically it's more of an overgrown leek with garlic tendancies so I'm guessing it's going to be milder than your traditional stuff. But hey, what the heck! That's what having a vegetable garden is all about, trying your hand and stuff and seeing what you like best!

We bought ours from Morgan & Thompson

Last year we planted the garlic in March time and we've only just realised that really that was way too late. It should be planted now. Apparently garlic likes a bit of cold weather to start of with, so we'll be getting them in this weekend I reckon.

Of course, planting it so early means we really have to think about what is going where this year. It's good practice to rotate your crops so you're not planting the same thing in the same place year in year out. Our garden is so incy wincy teeny tiny I don't think we'll have much of a choice where to put things. We've learnt a huge amount this year, especially when it comes to giving things space, so we'll be sure to plan our garden much better this time around. As for where the garlic is going... well we'll see what takes our fancy at the weekend!