My canning & preserving continues!

No one in my Italian family taught me to can and preserve the summer harvest for the dreary dead winter! No one ! Zero grandma. Nessuno. Nadie. Not one! Why? I have no idea why they didn't do this in the New Country as they sure as hell did in the old country!

It was my Italian cousins who are chefs, owned an Italian 4 star resturant that was part of the creation of Philly as a Resturant Town equal and/or reviling NYC, who introduced me quite recently to the joys of quick small patch pickling. Then other Italian cousins who visited from Canada with their loaded with home made pies & cans of veggies pickled. WOW!! Who knew! This stuff is GOOD! And easy to do. Well if you are a foodie.

I have friends who do "put up" tons of jars of tomato sauce( my family didn't). WHY???? I WISH my Noni (grandparents were still here to ask them WHY? This is YUMM!

So I started BIG and never looked back! This was my second winter of canning, so this year I decided to make use of all the winter citrus that shows up around here .  No it's not LOCAL! Ok! Give me a break! But it is from the USA!  So I wanted to do a lemon curd. And any vitamin C is good 'as it's needed.

Store bought is yucky. This was so much fun to make! I made almond cookies and made a sandwich of them with lemon curd. Gave some away of course. And look at the color! Sunshine in a jar!

Then I made Orange Marmade. I hated any marmalade. till I made it this year. Too bitter. But not these! The blood oranges were gone but I got some Cara Cara oranges at Trader Joes. These are Italian oranges, I found out, a salmon colored flesh,  super juicy & sweet. They also have the highest vitamin "C"  of any orange!

This colors are like SUNSHINE in a jar. Just what we need in winter!