marmalade | organised castle

After writing this blog for over 12 years I sometimes wonder whether it has become a little stale or repetitive. However, I am reminded that there are new people popping in all the time so I will continue to share my activities here.

Since it is winter and I am struggling with a cold it is not a great time to be outdoors. There is plenty to do inside the house and most of it can be distilled down to cooking and sewing.

Cooking is essential for feeding ourselves and I try to build up a bit of a supply of meals as well as condiments. In the past few days I have made grapefruit marmalade (recipe here) from fruit which was in a giveaway box in the next block, a new batch of gluten-free pizza bases (recipe here), sourdough bread (GMan’s handiwork) as well as Eggplant Rolls and Pumpkin, Eggplant and Chickpea Curry. You can check our my vegetable curry recipe here.

The next blog post will be the full recipe for the Eggplant Rolls.

On the sewing front, I have completed a couple of mending jobs.

New elastic (salvaged from worn-out undies) to replace the elastic and drawstring in this pair of pyjama bottoms which were originally purchased 2 years ago from the $1 rack at the op shop.

This jacket is 11 years old and still in excellent condition but the zip had broken so I bought a new zip and replaced it.

I think that is the mending out of the way for the moment so I do need to set my mind to making a dress to wear to a family wedding in 7 weeks time. Watch this space as the saying goes.

While there are plenty of photos of our vegetable garden there is much less evidence of the rest of the garden. Some of it is quite naturalised and, in parts, overgrown. We want to keep it as natural as possible but some areas require clearance of invasive weeds which are a real pest as they thrive in our high rainfall, sub-tropical climate. Little by little, we are planting native shrubs, in many cases, indigenous to the local area.

2020-05-28 01

This area alongside our western boundary fence had long been neglected. As part of the preparation for the soon to be assembled garden shed we cleared the area and have planted 3 new shrubs. In order to be able to maintain the area we have placed a rock edge about 1.5 metres from the fence. The rocks were all sourced from our property. Rocks are an abundant resource here and we use them for a multitude of purposes.

2020-05-28 02

As I mentioned in this post we have an orchard of about 10 citrus trees and were unfortunate enough to have an infestation of citrus fruit piercing moth a couple of months ago. Whether it is their lifecycle, the cold weather or simply a natural progression, they appear to have moved on and I think the Valencia oranges may have been spared as well as some of the grapefruit and the netted mandarin.

2020-05-28 03

Today I picked several grapefruit – enough to make a batch of marmalade. I sliced and soaked the fruit and will be making the marmalade tomorrow so will post all of the details then.

I started to cut them by hand.

2020-05-28 04

However, that proved too difficult so I heeded the advice of the recipe and used the thin slicing blade of my food processor which made short work of the job. It was a simple matter of retrieving the ends of the quarters and slcing the last bits by hand.

2020-05-28 05