Marmalade Skies

“Bought marmalade? Oh dear, I call that very feeble.” — Julian Fellowes

The first time I tried marmalade I was pretty disappointed. All I knew of the stuff was that it was beloved by Paddington the Peruvian bear who had somehow made his way to the London railway station he was named for. When I finally had some for the first time, I found it sweet but at the same time unpleasantly bitter. What did I know? I was eight years old!

I came to love marmalade, the more bitter the better. For a time, my ‘go to’ marmalade was Dundee’s Three Fruit that came in a white jar and is made with oranges, lemons and grapefruit. Dundee was a brand established in Scotland in 1797 by grocer James Keiller. Keiller bought a load of bitter Spanish Seville oranges on speculation and, according to legend, his wife had the brilliant idea of turning them into marmalade thus inventing this citrus preserve. Dundee’s is thick cut, meaning there are large bits of citrus rind in it, but the chunks were still never thick enough for me. 

I can rarely find Dundee’s anymore and almost never the Three Fruit kind. And the white jar, sadly, has been replaced with plain glass so now when I get a craving for the stuff, I make my own. It’s crazy how easy it is. Here’s how. 

Note: If you hate marmalade, the same process can be used to make jam with any kind of fruit or berries. Or just stop reading right now. 

Homemade Marmalade

There are just two ingrediants. Three, if you count water.

citrius fruit, sugar, water.

Take some citrus fruit, it doesn’t matter how much. If you only want to make one jar, a couple of pieces will suffice. Seville oranges are traditional but you can use pretty much any orange, lemon, or grapefruit or a combination. I have never used limes, but they should also work just fine. 

Since you are going to be boiling and eating the whole fruit including the rind, I highly suggest using organic fruit if you can get it. If you can’t, wash the fruit very well. If it is organic, wash it anyway. 

Slice the fruit in half lengthwise and then slice perpendicular into thin half-moons. You can vary the thickness depending on how thick you want the fruit rind in your final product.

Cut the fruit on a board or something that can catch the juice. If you have a wooden board that you use for chopping onions or garlic, you might want to avoid using that so the jam doesn’t taste of onions. 

Place all the sliced fruit and accumulated juices in a measuring cup. Push it down and note the volume. Pour the fruit, seeds and all it a pot and add an equal volume of water. Citrus seeds have a lot of pectin which helps the final product gel. Eventually you will remove them but not yet. 

Boil the fruit and water on a low simmer for 2 hours. Turn off and let sit overnight. 

The next day fish out the seeds with a slotted spoon. Conveniently, the seeds turn a dark color so they are easy to see. After removing all the seeds measure the volume of the fruit and water again and add back to the pot along with an equal quantity of white sugar. Yes, that is a lot of sugar. It doesn’t have to be super exact because when you cook it, water evaporates until the sugar to fruit ratio is correct. In essence, it adjusts itself. 

Place over a medium heat and gently stir until all the sugar has melted. Then bring to a boil and adjust the heat to a low simmer.

Now comes the tricky part.  Cook until done. 

How do you know when it is done? Here’s how. 

Take a small plate and place it in the freezer. 

After some time, maybe an hour, the liquid will start to look thicker. The bubbles will be bigger and rise more slowly. It should start to coat a spoon. Think of sugar that is starting to caramelize. 

When you think it might be done, take the plate from the freezer and place a small spoonful of the liquid on the plate. After a moment or two push it with your finger. You should see that it is gelling and becoming more solid like, well, jam. If you are not sure, let it go longer and try again. How long you let it cook depends a bit on how solid you like your marmalade. Remember it gets more solid as it cools and sets and when you refrigerate it. 

Close to the gel point. Note the gelled bits on the side of the pot.

When you think it is about there, turn off the heat, let it rest a few minutes and then spoon it into as many glass jars as you need. I would not use plastic as the jam is hot and could melt the plastic. After the jars cool, place them in the fridge. 

If you are not going to can the jam by sterilizing and sealing the jars (a whole process I am not going to get into here), you need to keep the final product refrigerated just as you would with an open jar of jam. 

It will keep for a long time in the fridge. Sugar is an incredible preservative. Unless you see mold growing in it, it should be fine to eat. I have had a jar of marmalade in the fridge for months. You only use a little at a time after all. If you are lucky, some the sugar might crystalize around the edges.

I recently made a batch using just organic lemons, bright and sweet with just a little bitterness. It is divine stuff and is amazing on a fresh buttered roll with a cup of coffee. 

There are things that can be made at home and should be made at least once just for fun and to understand the process but in general are not worth the trouble. The store-bought versions are perfectly good, thank you very much. Examples of these include: butter, mayonnaise, pasta, ice cream, peanut butter. 

On the other end of the spectrum are things that must be made at home (at least in the US). These include: pita bread, hummus, pasta sauce, whipped cream, salad dressing.

Marmalade is somewhere in between. If you find a brand you like, the store-bought kind can be decent. But if, like me, and your marmalade can never have too much ‘thick cut’ fruit in it, then this is easy to do.  You’ll have Mrs. Keiller eating her heart out – with your marmalade on it. 

Out and About: The Strange World that is Sorta Post-Covid But Also Kinda Isn’t

Last Saturday night my wife took me out for dinner and a show for my 60th birthday. “But wait a minute,” careful readers will say, “I thought your birthday was in September, no?”

It was. But the present from my wife were tickets (6 months hence) to see Paula Poundstone, stand-up comedian and frequent panelist on NPR’s news quiz show “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me.” Ms. Poundstone, who once said that she eats a box of Pop-Tarts every day, was performing at the beautiful Weinberg Center for the Arts in Frederick Md. The Weinberg is a beautiful old theater built in 1926. It’s a venue straight out of The Great Gatsby. 

Before the show, we decided to have an honesttogod sit-down meal in a restaurant. Not take out, not eating from a bag in the car, and certainly not dining outside! (What happened to spring?). This was easier said than done. We had allowed enough time to dine but not enough time for the wait at most of the restaurants we tried (30 minutes or more). Finally, we found success at a cute little Thai restaurant. It was packed but they seated us immediately. There was not a mask in sight among the patrons but most of the servers seemed to be wearing one. The vegetarian options were plentiful, the food was delicious, and the service speedy. 

Nothing is far in downtown Frederick and moments after leaving the restaurant we were seated in our 3rd row seats at the Weinberg. Paula’s audience has, I think, aged along with her. In videos of her from the 1980s and 1990s that I previewed online, her audience is made up of people in their 20s and 30s. At last week’s show, Barbara and I felt that we were on the younger end of the audience age spectrum. Definitely an “NPR” crowd. Even here, however, masks were not the rule. There were some but I’d say less than 30 percent. The theater was as packed as the restaurants on the main street. 

Paula was hilarious. She has a very wry, self-deprecating kind of humor that is at once very smart and very down-to-earth. There is always a part of her show that is extemporaneous banter with members of the audience. It’s always different and it’s always funny. I don’t know how she thinks so quickly in the moment. It’s a pretty long show. Somewhere between an hour and 90 minutes. That’s a long time to just stand in front of a few hundred people and just talk. But she had a receptive crowd and folks were ready to laugh and be among people. 

Then on Wednesday, I had lunch in Bethesda with a friend from my days at the Hillel International Center. The scene couldn’t have been more different. Bethesda can be a nightmare for parking, so I took Metro. The metro lot was more than half empty and the train cars were empty. But it was the middle of the day. Bethesda was very quiet and though it was prime lunch time, the many restaurants were open but empty. 

My friend and I met at the new José Andres restaurant called Spanish Diner. I think there might have been one other party of two in the restaurant. (The service was VERY good!). 

I am a huge fan of Chef Andres´ and have eaten many times at all of his DC restaurants, most often at Zaytinia, his middle-eastern small plates place. (It was there many years ago that a waiter shared with me the secret to making perfectly smooth hummus. No, I am not going to tell you right now what it is). In addition, to being an incredible chef presiding over a restaurant empire with unique restaurants in major cities all over the US, Andres´ is also a remarkable human being, leading the nonprofit World Central Kitchen which feeds people in disaster zones all over the world. Right now, they are doing amazing work feeding refugees from Ukraine.

Spanish Diner is, just as you might imagine, the intersection of the piquant flavors of Spain with an American Diner. There is even a section of the menu that offers, ‘Breakfast Served All Day.”

I didn’t have breakfast but rather selected the menú del día, which offered the opportunity to pick one appetizer, one main course, and one dessert. I had a lovely, creamy gazpacho, a grilled cheese made with a very strong bleu cheese that was super funky, and a beautiful flan for dessert that tasted like it was made of pure cream. The flan was served as is traditional in its own caramel sauce and in case the flan wasn’t rich enough on its own, with a dollop of whipped cream on the side. As Julia Child would have said, “It’s not something you eat every day!”

After lunch, I walked back through deserted Bethesda to the deserted Metro and headed home. 

So is Covid over? Yes and no. I think for some people in some places, it is mostly over and for other people in other places it is not. For a few, I suspect, it never will be. That’s ok. As the horribly overused expression (especially by me) goes, “You do you!” It goes without saying that the death toll of this thing has been incomprehensible. It is not at all unreasonable to be skittish about returning to public life in a whole-hearted way. Each person has to decide what is right for them and their immune system.

In a few days, I’ll be eligible for my 4th vaccine. I am waiting for the email from Safeway. By chance I got my first shot at the grocery store pharmacy and they have been fantastic at follow up. Emailing me when I am eligible for my next one, making it easy to book an appointment online and giving me with each shot, a coupon for 5% off groceries! Last time I grabbed a flu shot at the same time (sorry, just one coupon per visit). Get the sore arm thing out of the way in one go, I figured. They even sent me a link to add an electronic vaccine card to the Apple Wallet on my phone.  I don’t shop at Safeway as a regular thing but just maybe the future of health care is there. They have the right name for it. You feel way safe just going in. 

Unlike some, I won’t have to return to an office and a long commute. Nor did I mind the quiet life or even most of the restrictions that went along with the pandemic. I was happy to putter around at home trying to fix things visiting people over zoom or online. Having said that, there was something nice this week being out and about, eating in restaurants, going to a show, and hearing others laugh in a public space. There is an energy we get from seeing others about the business of living their tiny lives at the same time that we are living ours. 

And if by some good fortune, that life occasionally includes lunch with a friend and flan in caramel sauce that life is as good as it gets. 

Enough

In the process of preparing my application for German citizenship, I am uncovering documents that I never knew existed. One of them is my grandfather’s U.S. Naturalization Certificate from September 7, 1933. What captivated me when I saw this document for the first time a few weeks ago was the photo, a black and white passport type picture of my grandpa as a young man, just 29 years old. But it was not my young grandpa that grabbed me. It was the fact that in the photo he looks exactly like my Uncle Steve, his youngest child and only son, who was born on that same day nine years later, in 1942. Then viewing another document, I also recently saw for the first time, I had cause to giggle. Box 15a on my grandfather’s 2001 death certificate lists his ‘usual occupation’ as “efficiency expert & poet.” No doubt this description was supplied by my uncle who cared for him in his final years, a little Easter egg he dropped, not knowing when or if it would be discovered by a family member or perhaps just to amuse himself or because he thought my grandfather would have liked it.

My uncle, Steve Kohn, died Wednesday night after a decline of several years into dementia. You deserve to know something about him. 

As is often the case with the generation ahead of us, Steve was simply a constant presence in my life, my mom’s younger brother whom we saw a few times a year. A bit childlike himself, he was a man who related easily to children. He was always interested in what I had to say and was never patronizing. Not surprisingly, he chose teaching as a profession and spent his entire career teaching English to junior high school students in gritty New Rochelle, NY. I have no doubt that he was very good at it. Relaxed, funny, quick to laugh, and, like his father, an unrelenting and unrepentant punster and teller of corny jokes. He must have been a natural in the classroom. He loved his students and often told stories about them. He loved words and language (again like his father). That love came through in his conversation, his humor and, I am sure, in his teaching. 

Steve practiced Theravada Vipassana Buddhism and was serious about it, meditating every day and as a member of a sangha for decades. Buddhism and care for all life turned him toward vegetarianism. However, like the Buddha himself, to avoid offending his host, my uncle would not refuse meat if it were served to him. This principle often extended to finishing the meat dishes of family members in restaurants though he would never order it. 

In spite of (or perhaps because of) their physical and intellectual similarities, my grandfather and my uncle didn’t always get along. But as my grandparents aged, they moved into a Jewish senior living facility across the street from where my uncle lived and he saw them nearly every day. My grandfather and he grew closer and my grandfather told him things that he had shared with no one else about his life in Germany before the Nazis came to power.  

My grandmother adored my uncle. Once when I was visiting her with him (my grandfather had already died), she asked him if he believed in God. At this time, she was in advanced stages of dementia herself and Steve was the only person she knew and consistently recognized. He replied, “Tell me what you mean by God and I’ll tell you if I believe in God.” My grandma just laughed. 

Steve did not strongly identify as Jewish. He certainly did not embrace the religious aspects of Judaism in any way, but he could be generous with his identity. Sometimes when he would visit my grandparents at the Hebrew Home in New Rochelle he would encounter a group of nine men who wanted to pray Mincha, the afternoon service. They would ask him to join them so that the full service, which requires at least ten Jews, could be read. Though he couldn’t read the Hebrew prayers, much less understand them, and perhaps didn’t even think of himself as Jewish, he joined so that those old men he didn’t know (my grandfather would never have been among them) could fulfil their obligation to worship a diety he didn’t believe in. It says much about who he was.

Like my grandfather, my uncle would do anything for anyone. Not to be kind or virtuous, but because human beings need help from each other and helping is just what one does. My grandfather’s later years after he retired at age 85 were spent running around his apartment building fixing things for other residents or picking up groceries or medicine for folks. Steve was the same way.  One felt that there was no assistance or act of service he wouldn’t render when asked. Usually he did so without being asked. 

After he retired, he moved from New Rochelle to the beautiful Hudson River Valley in upstate New York to be near his son and his grandchildren. Quickly he found himself on the board of his community association and shortly thereafter its president. If you know anything about such volunteer positions, you know that they are thankless, yet he performed his duties as if it were a paying job that he loved. 

Steve’s marriage in the 1960s had been brief and he never remarried but he found a partner in his new home, the kind of relationship that had eluded him for much of his life with a lovely woman named Halema. They were inseparable until Steve’s illness and Covid pried them apart for a time. I suppose it goes without saying that he adored his grandchildren and spoke of them all the time. 

The last time I saw my uncle in full possession of his faculties was at my mom’s 80th birthday party in July of 2018. He and Halema had taken the train down for the celebration. He was his usual funny self but already starting to complain of memory issues. By October of that year, he was already unable to make the trip for my daughter’s wedding. We corresponded after that and I am grateful that I thought to ask him to send me copies of some of his poems. I had to remind him a few times, but finally a thick envelope arrived at my apartment in Rochester. I still have the envelope on which I scrawled, “Contains Poems!” in light blue fountain pen ink so that I would not accidentally throw it away. 

Last April, after the first round of vaccines opened things up, my mom and I drove up to see him in the memory care unit of his residence. We had a few nice meals in a nearby diner with Halema and saw my uncle twice. He was like himself but with no short-term memory. My mom brought pictures from their childhood and he knew exactly who everyone was. He took great delight in seeing them. A few minutes later she showed him the pictures again and though he didn’t remember that he had just seen them, he enjoyed them all over again. He laughed and joked as he always did and gave little sign of being distressed or even aware of his situation.  I read some of his own poems to him and he finished the lines before I said them.

That was the last time I saw him.

Steve Kohn was, what we might have called in earlier times, a man of letters and so we will let him have the last words this week with a poem that he wrote in 2014 and that was in the aforementioned envelope. It is appropriately titled:

Last Words

I remember my father’s last three words. 

When I told him that my son had contacted me

after eighteen years of silence

to tell me his daughter had been born, 

Dad’s aphasia could not stifle

that first word in months, 

“Wonderful.”

Two weeks later he died,

two months short of ninety-seven,

never having met her.

Two days before dying he told me,

“It’s enough.”

Mom had no trouble speaking. 

I don’t remember her last words to me,

but I can guess.

Each time always the first time for her, 

“How old am I?”

“98, but you don’t look a day older than 97 and a half”

“What day is it?”

“It’s today.”

When I took her for a car ride, she would ask, 

“Where are we?”

Each time I would answer, “Here.”

Each time first time for us. 

When I took that last picture of her

holding her infant great-granddaughter, 

she didn’t know who I was, nor the baby. 

Her smile glowed. 

Then and now it was and is today and

we are here and

wonderful. It’s enough.