(Alternative cliche title I decided not to hurt y'all with: When life gives you oranges, make marmalade!)

During the last big vacation here in China, I went to visit my girlfriend's extended family in a place I decided to call Orange County, as it had recently become overwhelmed with orange tree business - millions upon millions, mile after mile of orange trees coating the entire mountain landscape, something only recently developed in the last 3-5 years or so.

So, when it came time to return to Shanghai, my suitcase was crammed full of local oranges... and in the meantime, the grandfather was sending a full *20kg* of boxed up oranges through shipping. 

Whatever were we going to do with it all??


![db508c5f232ea1a8d6a0c1975a27135.jpg](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/mobbs/Eoc9xPX7C6K39f7VXsbjxDNim347iwS8N7KEDXqjq3AFfKQPGrGhaQPWK6jm2hFWaDq.jpg)


Well...

# Marmalade!

We have a few other plans, such as attempting essential oils, although this doesn't use more than just the rind.

After losing maybe 30% to time, as many of the lesser protected ones quickly went rotten, we sorted the good ones and bagged them up, ready for marmalding.

If you don't know, marmalade is basically like an orange jam, kinda, an old British cuisine. However, the traditional version of it includes the actual rind, something I actually didn't know, as a Brit myself. 

So yeah, you slice 'em up thin, include some lemons too, and then a TON of sugar, boil it up, leave it overnight, boil it some more, and you're done. 


![89a5b857e57d18c0e721c42e99514ee.jpg](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/mobbs/EoK7mhvUoC7jSYCAqtZUZdXk3Wm2QtcdD98MXmAdh9MZmi4o5tzYSCPNCLU5q2S1JCc.jpg)


The sugar part is a bit of a controversial thing for me though. All the online recipes require more sugar than you can even fathom makes sense. For 4 oranges and 2 lemons, you should use almost ***2kg of sugar...*** 

Given that oranges are basically balls of sugar, that's a LOT of sugar! 

In fact, my first batch, though obviously delicious because of all that sugar, tasted more like caramel than the actual orange itself. 

So, my next batch I decided to cater it more to a normal, sane person such as myself. 4 big oranges and 500g of sugar, 25% of the suggested amount. 

Well, I was pretty excited when it started turning all jammy in texture before my very eyes. The science in short is that the white stuff on the inside of the orange serves as the dispenser of *pectin*, a kind of carbohydrate that kicks off that jammy process. So, traditional marmalade is a more natural way of creating the jam by using the skin itself. 

I now have a lot of marmalade. Like, 6 of these:

![b179ff930f34f327838f661885f4cc7.jpg](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/mobbs/241tfVnAGCCSgniqVwYLmPs3N4PBp8RgZgjxzaQCN6SBY6S46DiKVcTkoKYjq5X9V3hEH.jpg)

And I still have about 50 oranges left XD

Any suggestions to get through them all, aside from 'juice' would be appreciated!