January and February are a barren time as far as preserving fresh produce goes, but there are some delicious recipes still worth getting on with.

Most of these involve imported citrus fruit, such as Seville oranges, which are at their cheapest and most plentiful at this time of year.

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.

Home made candied lemon peel is very easy to make, and a great way to use up left over lemon rinds. It also tastes better than shop bought, and you can cut the peel to just how you like it.

This batch was made from the peel left over from making lemon cordial, but you could easily freeze single lemons until you had enough.

Lemon cordial is a refreshing summer drink, and making your own using this recipe is surprisingly simple.

It would be a great recipe to do if you ever find crates of lemons being sold off cheap, as can happen on markets towards the end of the day. It's also a good choice for making early in the year, before the elderflowers are ready for  elderflower cordial.

Last spring's rhubarb schnapps was one of the great preserving successes of the year, so I have been keen to make some more from the moment the rhubarb in the garden started sprouting

As well as making a jar of the original version this year I have also tried a jar with added ginger. Ginger always works well with rhubarb, rhubarb and ginger jam also being a favorite, so this schnapps should be good with a extra bit of spice.

So now that I've made rhubarb crumble, rhubarb jam, rhubarb crumble, rhubarb chutney and rhubarb crumble I was searching round for ideas and came across a few people who had made rhubarb schnapps. This sounded like a great idea, especially as it would be ready for the planned camping trips during the hot summer we've been promised.
The same recipe was used on both erin's kitchen and the accidental scientist, a simple looking looking procedure from Nigella Lawson's How to be a Domestic Goddess: Baking and the Art of Comfort Cooking.

As part of using up the ongoing glut of rhubarb in the garden, and having already made rhubarb and ginger jam, chutney was next on the list. I never usually make chutney at this time of year, it tends to be the sort of thing I submit vegetables to at the end of their life, such as green tomatoes, huge marrows and windfall apples. It seems slightly unfair on the excited spring shoots to confine them to several hours of simmering in vinegar, but we do get through a lot of chutney over the year and a new flavour will be eagerly looked forward to when it's ready.

The recipe I used was adapted from the one at the thefoody.com, as recommended on the grow your own forums.

Rhubarb was one of the first things we planted in our new vegetable garden when we moved in. I don't think I have ever bought rhubarb in the shops, and had therefore probably not cooked with it since leaving home. Now every year (apart, for some, in the breastfeeding ones) we can get very excited about the first new shoots and then the sudden abundance. It does very well in our clay soil, and the surplus is often given away in an attempt to limit the amount of crumble consumed (for weight reasons, as I can easily eat a bowl cold for breakfast).