Deserts

[degringolade]

 

Expressionism / Heinrich Campendonk/ Mann, Pferd, Kuh

I throw ideas out in search of enlightenment, not because I regard myself as an authority.

But most of the ideas aren’t mine.  I read other folks' stuff and try to distill some meaning out of a fog of subtle distinctions and half truths.  Usually this doesn’t work out all that well and I tear down 90% of what I just constructed.  

But I go out ‘a searching every day to find some seed to work with. I sometimes wonder if shutting myself away and just thinking things out myself might be easier, but I am always leery of the problems with being an autodidact.  It might be good for the rough carpentry needed to put together the basic structure, but it is the finish work that makes things worth living in.  

Lately things have been a bit sparse in the “good ideas” reading.  Maybe it isn’t with the ideas being presented, but the way that so much sifting has to be done to distill the idea from the author’s prejudices.  

So I am gonna give up for a week or so and do something more mundane.  Let’s talk about marmalade.  I like the early months of the year because that is when citrus fruits get cheap enough to enjoy frequently.  But I have always been kind of offended when I throw away the peels after getting to the good stuff.  So this week I saved the peels from my six-pack of huge oranges from GO and froze them away.  

I spent time this morning slicing them up and putting them in a stock pot with some water, some lime juice and simmered them for an hour with a bag of cranberries that have been sitting in the freezer since thanksgiving.  After about a half hour or so, I took my handy-dandy $3.99 at Goodwill wand mixer and chewed up some of the fruit stuff ( I am thinking about 10%).

Boiled the stuff merrily for a while, doing all of the jammy-make stuff needed.  What I ended up with is a congealed mass of sweet-sour-bitter stuff that I ladelled into pint jars and cold packed for twelve minutes at a full boil.