January Tasks

With the new year often comes a renewed sense of organization, routine, and normalcy, which I'm always thankful for after Holiday Craziness. I've spent the last couple of days cleaning out closets, getting rid of things we don't need, thereby making more room to consolidate and put in order what we do have.

January is also the perfect time to get back to canning, taking advantage of fall and winter's bounty to replenish your stored goods.

This month, for instance, is when I usually put up orange marmalade and lemon curd.  Both are useful in a wide variety of dishes and desserts, and both have a place in my pantry.  Well, the marmalade goes to the pantry, the lemon curd goes to the freezer because it keeps better there.

There used to be four.  I have no willpower.

This morning, I used the last of 2012's lemon curd to make some lemon pies.  Don't they look good?  

While we're on the subject of citrus, this is also a great month to start some Limoncello, using fresh lemons.  The recipe I like to use is here: Tramie's Kitchen -- Limoncello

I am currently also dealing with the last of fall's pumpkins.  We've had soup and pumpkin spice bread since December and are all about bloody well sick of it about now, so I will puree our remaining pumpkins, plop the puree into a Mason Jar and then forget about it in the bottom of my freezer use it later. 

 

Someday it will look good to me again.

While I don't anticipate any more calls for pumpkin pie, we may get a wild-hair urge to have some pumpkin bread come October or so, before next year's gourds are ready, so this is a perfect solution.