Oranges and cherries, oh my!

I finally got around to doing something with the oranges I foraged back on Sat May 11 and Mon May 13, as well as the cherries I picked on Fri May 17. They'd just been sitting in my fridge since I got them & I figured it was time to deal with them.

First I washed all the oranges in the sink, then I cut off both ends and any overly-blemished bits of the peel. I put all of these into a bag to be used for pectin.

This is after I put the seeds into the bag, too.

I cut the oranges into halves and then quartered each half & put it all into a big pot, turned the heat to medium, and put the lid on the pot.

After it had cooked long enough to soften up the oranges, I used a potato masher to squash all the fruit up and release the juice. I ladled the fruit through my wire mesh strainer into another pot, using the ladle to squash all the juice out. After each strainer-full, I set the peels and pulp aside, then put them back into the pot, along with a cup of water, then repeated the process.

After that, I had some errands to run, so I turned off the stove to let the pulp & peels cool while I went out.

When I got back, I used my hands to separate the seeds from the peels. NOTE TO SELF: Next time, peel the oranges and cook the pulp without the peel to release the seeds. Cook the peel separately, or add it to the pulp after the seeds are removed from the pot. The seeds can be strained out via the wire mesh strainer much easier without the peels attached! Duh.

I put the seed-free peel into the food processor (along with a cup or two of the juice) and blended until the peel was in tiny pieces -- I probably did four batches. Once all the peels were chopped up, I combined it with the remaining juice and put it into the fridge. I now have a bit more than 4 quarts of puréed oranges!

After that, I washed all the cherries in the sink and set up my cherry production line.

My intention was to pit the cherries and put them into the pot and cook them up tonight, but by this time, I was pretty tired, so I decided to put the pitted cherries into a 4L Cambro container and the pits (which still have a lot of cherry flesh attached!) into another container, then put them in the fridge. (I actually pitted the cherries outside because pitting cherries spatters juice everywhere! I even wore a garbage bag to keep the juice off my clothes, LOL.)

3 lbs of cherries

I hope to process the fruit tomorrow, but it might not be until Monday because I have an all-day rehearsal on Sunday and there are some things I need to do tomorrow to prepare.

Here's the list of things I plan to make from the oranges and cherries:

• Cherry-Orange Marmalade -- this should actually use up almost all of my cherries. Any leftover cherries will become jelly and butter. YUM!
• Orange Marmalade with Juniper Berries and Port Wine -- using juniper berries from the big bush in our back yard
• Pomander Spiced Orange Marmalade -- with cloves, cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg
• Orange Garam Masala Mustard -- same basic recipe as Lemon Curry Mustard, but with oranges and garam masala instead of lemons and curry

Oh, I almost forgot! I had a jar of peaches in vanilla bean syrup (yes, real vanilla bean!) that a friend had given to me. It's just been sitting in our fridge and we never remember we have it -- though to be fair, we almost never eat dessert here at home, so we have had few occasions to use it. So yesterday, I poured the contents of the jar into the blender, added some leftover Pinot Grigio white wine I had in the fridge, and puréed it all up, then made it into jelly. It sure smelled heavenly while it was cooking!