Rhubarb and orange jam is a old fashioned recipe which appears in Mrs Beeton's famous cook book. It's a good alternative to Rhubarb and Ginger Jam and can be made with young or old rhubarb.

This time of year we're struggling to keep up with the rhubarb, and it's a great chance to stock up on jams and pickles early in the season. Rhubarb always seems to produce a faultless range of preserves, there's a selection of recipes here.

Making marmalade seems to be one of those British winter pastimes whose traditions get passed down through the generations. The day that Seville oranges appear in the green grocers is nervously waited for, then several days are cleared to allow for the slicing and peeling, boiling and bottling, always allowing for a few extra jars to be handed out to those unfortunate enough not to have the time to partake.

I've made marmalade before using a traditional recipe, but this year decided to go for the whole fruit method.
I'd been recommended this technique by several friends who swore by how easy it was, particularly when it came to slicing the oranges.

February is the time of the year to make marmalade as the new season of citrus fruit is in the shops. As well as using the traditional Seville oranges, marmalade can be made with limes, grapefruit or lemons, or any combination of the above.

I was inspired to make this recipe because I still have a bag of limes in the freezer, left over from a cheap box full I got at a car boot sale last spring. You can easily freeze all citrus fruit and use them to make marmalade later in the year if you wish.

When making marmalade last week I froze some unused lemon peel with the thought of using it for something constructive. After some thought, and research, I decided to have a go at candied peel, not something I'd usually even use.

Hopefully having some in the house will be useful when it comes to baking, and for mincemeat at Christmas if it lasts that long. I wanted to have a wider range of peel than just two lemons, so the bag in the freezer grew to contain the following:

An exciting few days - making marmalade for the first time, something I've always fancied doing but never got round to. I think as it was I probably left it a bit late, luckily the local supermarket had bags of Seville oranges.
I promptly bought several bags and left them in a bowl for a while.

Researching recipes threw up a quandary, whether to use the 'whole fruit method' as recommended by Mary Cadogan on the BBC Good Food website, or to go with the 'slice the peel before simmering' version from my trusted "Good Housekeeping" Cookery Book.
In the end the second won out, purely because it was late in the afternoon and I didn't want to hang around waiting for oranges to cool before slicing them.