Weekend Accomplishments and Citrus Jelly

I finished several of my produce bags and they couldn't have been easier! They weigh .1 of an ounce, don't have to be pretty on the edges and will perhaps lighten my footprint...or whatever. They're so simple it's not really worth posting pictures of the instructions because the mesh is so see through. All it is is two squares of mesh zigzagged on three sides and ta da!

Oh, and I am once again reminded of how poor my estimating skills are, each yard makes 4 bags, so 12 not 6 were made...I will never be a quilter.
Since I haven't zipped them all up, I might curve the bottom of a few to see if I like that better.







I also whipped up the curtain for my kitchen.

It's this great graphic Ikea fabric, cityscape kind of thing and I think the colors work great in the kitchen. The only problem is that I would have been slightly better off with either a sheer or making two panels as when it's down, it lets in zero light. But I had planned to keep it tied to the side most of time and the pattern would have been ruined if I had cut it down the middle...
Hmm... so it's not ideal. It may be temporary now that I think about it more. It's really pretty when it's down though. Adds another gray dimension to the kitchen that keeps it from looking too squee.
We will see once summer sun rolls around.

This was my Tuesday night project at work! Four Citrus Jelly!
I am at a different workplace than usual so I knew that I wouldn't have the noise liberty of traditionally water bath processing the suckers, so they are instead freezer jelly! They did seal on their own, but I don't want to kill anyone here with lurking botulism.

So here's the recipe:

Four Citrus Jelly

 

6 small limes, juiced

3 large Meyer lemons, juiced

2 small oranges, juiced

4 medium blood oranges, juiced

7 cups sugar

Strain the juice to remove the seeds and pithy bits. I used a colander lined with a coffee filter.

Add sugar to the pot and cook mixture down on medium high heat until it reaches 220 degrees and/or it sheets off a cold spoon.

Pour into prepared jars.

Now you can at this point, provided you preheated the jars and lids and such, process the mason jars in a water bath for 10 minutes, but as I couldn't make that much noise, I just let them cool and tucked them into the freezer when I got home from work.

I thought the blood orange gave them a nice color and the flavor is really bright and tart, it's not syrupy sweet or bitter, it's just a really enjoyable tarty taste. 

I had some reservations about not using pectin with this, but I'll have to post on that later.

For now, I think half of my week was fairly productive, we'll see about the rest of it!