Making marmalade: lots of work, small payoff

That sounds like a description for writing books, too, for most authors except the upper echelon. 

My friend, Robin, makes marmalade all the time and never complains, but that's because she's more hard-working than I am, and I'm whinier than she is.

I must have spent a total of about 2 hours on my feet sanitizing the darn jars, lids, equipment, etc,. and zesting...

cooking up the zest

and sectioning + extracting the insides of the oranges and grapefruits...

the fruits, as spent and shriveled as yours truly

Using the recipe in Robin's "A Simple Jar of Jam" ebook, I cooked up the pulp.

yummy pulp

cooking with fruit and pectin, waiting to add sugar

After all that, I canned 6 measly pints of marmalade.

Granted, it's some of the best marmalade money can't buy, but 2 hours?! Really? If hubby, Son2 and I didn't love marmalade so much, I'd just make  super easy strawberry jams instead.
But, it really was all worth it because look who came to partake of the remains of the fruit? No, not Kazuo Ishiguro...

a Little Wood-satyr (Son1 won't let me use "Wood-Satyr," saying world convention dictates I use "Wood-satyr"...in case anyone else actually cares)

We were really hoping to attract Baltimore Orioles, but this was just as good since we're amateur lepidoptera-philes. :)

What's your favorite jam/jelly to make or to eat?

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams