Last Week Dear hubby sent me a message that at the store in the city where i normally get my Seville oranges for marmalade didn’t have any..

However they had my Blood Oranges and they had wonderful looking and Cara Cara oranges on sale for 2.77 a pound. I knew these oranges have a thinner skin with a lovely flavor.

A three pound bag of oranges made me 7 full 8oz jars and a bit left for fresh eating. They were indeed beautiful oranges, I washed them, trimmed the ends off, cut them in half to take out the middle pith and then cut them into quarters and into my food processor they went on the chop/pulse mode till they were cut up into bits but not blended by any means.

Into the bottom pot for my Steam Juicer Set (the bottom pot makes the best jam/jelly pot) went the diced orange and measured out 7 cups of sugar, 1 tsp of salt. Bring to a simmer boil and away it goes, it took me 50 minutes at the simmer boil to get it to the thickness i wanted.

If you like a loose style set, i would say it was reached around 40 minutes, that i got my first wrinkle on the cold plate but i wanted a full wrinkle line with very little fall back or spread, which for me took 50 min.

Remember to scrape down your sides and to stir often, this is a putter in the kitchen close by time, not a walk away and leave it, it will seem to simmer, simmer but once it goes, it will go quickly!

These were water bath canned for 15 to finish them, This was a hot to hot process, I took each hot jar out of the water bath, filled it with the jam, new lid, reused ring and right back into the water bath and only after all were back in the water bath pot did i start my count once i was back to a full boil.

All sealed and will be washed down, rings off and off they will go to the canning pantry.

Lets break down my costs as much as possible.

3 pounds of Cara Cara oranges = 8.31

Sugar 7 cups =3.20 (Canadian Sugar Beet)

Salt- = 05

Canning lids = 1.19

Canning jars (these are older heavy ball jars and they are at least ten plus years old, so at this point, i am going to say) =.25 cents but i expect its even less

Power : 2.00

Giving me a total of 15 dollars plus my time

That brings each jar to 2.14

The average of a Top quality small marmalade jars in the store is 8.99 and we can only expect the prices to climb over the next year.

That’s a savings of 6.85 cents per jar for a total savings on this batch $47.95