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Oventabulous!
Houston (and everywhere else too), I have an oven!!!!
It is so great. It is the best thing EVER.
You know the best way to make someone bake tasty treats? Take their oven away for half a year. It worked like a charm on me. I never knew I used an oven so much until I didn’t have one.
It was so exciting to have one again that I was baking in that thing less than three hours after it was installed. I’d probably have baked sooner but I wasn’t in town yet. I was still out at the beach for our weekly visit with Toby. But you can bet I hightailed it out of Orange County as fast as I could so I could get home and put this hunk of 1970’s junk to work. I was soooo very happy.
My Dad is here this weekend and in less than two days he has installed my oven, painted my bathroom floor mint green (that actually clashes terribly with the avocado green tub but is a zillion times better than the water-damaged press-board that used to be there), fixed the one spot in my yard that Holly was escaping from AND taken the cover off my swamp cooler so I can be cool as a cucumber once summer gets here.
Tomorrow if he has time after jury duty (he’s a busy guy) he might even install a motion sensor light in my backyard so I can do laundry in the dark without having to plug an extension cord in. Is my Dad awesome or what? He blows me away with his selflessness and this is just how he is. He’s always like that. He’ll give you the shirt off his back and then ask if you’d like his shoes too.
Anyway, back to my best-thing-ever oven. I do not care one bit that it’s an old hand-me-down from my mom’s trailer on the other side of town. It is a thing of beauty in my eyes. And it works!!! That’s all I care about! So I shined it up…
(I’m just a wee bit excited with the Fonzie thumbs.)
…and put it to use making lemon bars of course! (I seem to have forgotten the “s” in my recipe. Oh well.)
The cherry on top of this whole first-day-of-baking after not being able to bake for five months was that I finally got to use the hand-me-down Kitchen Aid that Bethany gave me back around New Years. I know! Do I score when it comes to hand-me-downs or what?!! It even came with stickers! Bethany got a new one for Christmas and mailed me her old one. You know that postage was a whopper.
Sadly, when I got it I had to leave it in the box and hide it in the back corner of Bug’s room. It didn’t fit on my counter and I knew that I couldn’t really use it for anything until I got the oven fixed, which seemed it like wouldn’t happen until the tenth of Never the way we were going around and around trying to find a thermal couple that didn’t exist.
Well the tenth of never did come! And baking with a Kitchen Aid is about a thousand times better than I even expected. The ease! No wonder all you crazy foodie people love baking so much! It’s easy when you have a handy dandy mixer machine that does all the hard work for you. I had no idea!
So I mixed and I whirred and twirled that Kitchen Aid like I was a musician and it was my guitar. And then I texted Bethany excitedly, of course, and took about a thousand pictures. If you ever want to know why there is flour in the buttons on my camera, now you’ll know why. But don’t worry, I blew a bunch of compressed air on it afterwards and I think it’s still as good as new—I hope. What can I say? I use my equipment.
Then I popped those lemon bars in the oven and went outside to enjoy the sunset with the neighborhood kids.
There were these really cool lenticular clouds out that looked amazing at twilight. I tried to capture it on the camera but unfortunately, it’s pretty hard to take a photo of them without all the distracting houses and trees in the way. Distracting cat-fairies riding by on tricycles are great though.
And then the lemon bars were done! They were so tasty. Except I got a little over-zealous with my backyard lemons and added an extra tablespoon of zest that wasn’t in the recipe. Ooops. All the kids in the neighborhood have been reporting with puckered lips that the lemon bars are way way way too sour, which leaves way too many lemon bars for all the adults who are so annoyingly watching their calorie intake. Watching calories can be so tiresome. Thankfully, I have had company over in the last few days and I’m happy to report that I only have about four lemon bars left in my fridge taunting me. Tomorrow I’ll have to take a glamour shot of one so I can share the taunting with you. It’s only fair.
I’m happy to report that I have baked lemon bars, roasted cauliflower and cooked a Sunday roast (actually my mom cooked it but I still got to take credit for it). And! As if that wasn’t enough good news I now have towel bars, something my kitchen was sorely lacking.
Life is good. It’s oventabulous.
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Marmalade!
Well, I finally did it. I finally made marmalade! Woo hoo!!! This has been on my big list of things I want to do before I die. Of course, I should probably qualify my previous statement and say that my mom made marmalade in my kitchen while I hovered, took notes and photographed. But I totally paid attention and then I cleaned up the kitchen afterwards which counts for many many points, right? Do you know how sticky citrus can make a floor? Very.
Anyway, I’m super confident I could make my own batch of marmalade all by myself next time if I wanted to. That’s enough for me.
Bug was kind enough to copy the recipe down for you. I’ll transcribe it for you below.
Ingredients:
4 oranges
2 lemons
6 cups of sugar
2 1/2 cups water
1/8 tsp baking soda
Sure Gel pectin (you can use the other brand just make sure you follow their directions)
sterile jars (enough to fit 4 cups of fruit, you pick the size. We used two big ones and four little ones.)
First, you’ll want to wash your oranges and lemons really well. Especially if you’re like us and they’ve been sitting in the backyard collecting dirt and bird crap—I mean sitting there being perfectly chemical-free and organic!
When they’re all nice and pretty, take a vegetable peeler (yep, a plain old potato peeler) and skin the zest layer off. My mom says back in the olden days they used a knife and it was a big pain in the neck. Use a peeler, it’s super easy! When you’re done with that, chop up the rind into small pieces. We liked small thin rectangles for some reason.
You’ll have to forgive my mom’s hands for not being model-esque. Them’s workin’ hands, riddled with arthritis. But they still work! Next, peel and discard the pith part of the oranges and lemons by hand.
Chop the fruit up into bite-size pieces and reserve the juice. One of those cutting boards with a reservoir would be handy here but we didn’t have one.
Next, place zest peels, 2 1/2 cups of water and 1/8 tsp baking soda in a sauce pan. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat, cover and simmer for 20 minutes. I’m missing some photos here. They were not photogenic and got REJECTED.
After 20 minutes add the fruit and juice and simmer for 10 minutes. Then add your four cups of chopped fruit and pectin to the six cups of sugar in a BIG ol’ pot and bring to a rolling boil. I learned a rolling boil is a boil that can’t be stirred down. My mom is so smart with these helpful tips. I know you probably already know all this stuff but I didn’t.
After the fruit “brew” has boiled at a rolling boil for a whole minute, you can turn off the heat and then ladle your delicious smelling marmalade into jars leaving 1/8 of an inch of space from the top.
Like so. Aren’t they pretty? I call them my precioussssssssss jewels in my best Gollum voice.
Then we screwed on the lids and let them sit in the Jar Spa aka a water bath.
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh…..” say the jars. (They were tense and sticky.) This is just what they needed. I sort of wished I had a spa to climb into too after all this mess.
And that was that. We made two batches! I guess it has to set for a week or so but I opened a jar the next day and had some on toast.
It was delicious! Why wouldn’t it be? It’s pretty much orange-flavored sugar.
(my little helper)
Then I made some labels (2nd version not shown) so we can give the rest away as gifts. It’s going fast. I think I’m going to have to make another batch! Good thing I have more oranges! I actually don’t have an orange tree in my yard. I have one lemon tree and two tangelo trees but my neighbor does and she said I can pick them anytime, there are plenty! What I really need to figure out how to make is lemon marmalade. Is there such a thing?
