Sub-LIME on a Dime

First, I'd like to apologize for neglecting my blog. Second, well, there is no second.

I hope everyone has had the pleasure of having a vase of fresh flowers decorating their house at LEAST once in their lives. It's a luxury that can be pretty expensive, especially when you have florist flowers- taste on a grocery store flowers-budget. Lets be serious, isn't that mostly everyone nowadays?

I had the good fortune to be in the right place at the time yesterday two days ago when I was attending a lovely wedding. As the lights were turned on after the reception, I quickly discovered that an unimaginable amount of limes and florist-quality white hydrangeas and green spider mums that had been used for 4 hours , tops, were about to be thrown out. Waste not, want not, right everyone? When the employees saw me stuffing my handbag what I was doing, they were kind enough to get me a grocery bag for the limes! The flowers were another monster entirely, but I got them home and they were none the worse for wear. Indulgent husband pretended I didn't look like the shameless scavenger I was as he drove us home and spoke of other things.


But really, beautiful flowers for free? And limes for margaritas marmalade?! Sign. Me. Up.


The only drawback was the flowers' stem lengths; about six inches, which doesn't leave one much to work with. I segregated the flowers and bound them in a few bunches with broccoli/asparagus rubberbands and put them into any larger container I could find. This included an American-style trifle bowl, quart-sized canning jars, and a glass ice bucket. One does what one must.

Today I wanted to have a decorated table for dinner instead of the usual wipe-off white and red plaid. I hadn't considered making a flower arrangement with my beauties, but I remembered some that I've seen and, under my breath, I've said "I can do that!" All it took was fifteen minutes with barely any fuss and I'm now the proud owner of a gorgeous centerpiece that even inspired J to comment!


 Here's how I did it:

My trifle bowl. I bought this a few years ago from Wal-Mart for less than ten dollars, I believe. It is Anchor glassware. They still have them, but you can use any similar clear glass container. Be creative!

I put one layer of limes into the bottom of it.

I placed another layer, minus the center lime.

I began to fill it with cool water...

and up floats that pesky middle lime! I took it out. Let's try this again...

SO. I filled it with cool water...

and I proceeded to place my rubber-banded hydrangeas in.

I separated spaces in between the large blooms and poked a green spider mum in. I alternated the spacing to make it look like polka-dots.

Insert. Bahaha!

Six hydrangea heads and eight spider mums later......

TADA!

C'est magnifique! Of course you can do this with just about anything, but I like for white and lime and purple for some reason. As I was typing that last sentence, I remembered these were the colors I came up with out of nowhere used for my wedding. D'oh!

Some other ideas you could try:

Christmas ornaments

Plastic Easter eggs/ Easter grass (Messy clean-up, I bet!)

Lemons

Golf balls (Father's Day!)

Legos (Little boys' birthdays)

Mardi Gras beads

Really-- any small items that won't be ruined by submersion. Let your theme or interior decor style be your guide!

What was your best trash-to-treasure project?

The Quest for Marmalade: An exotic citrus mini-series

This photo was taken from www.thehungrymouse.com.
It is definitely not my property, but it IS a gorgeous photo.

Marmalade. I'm not talkin' the Voulez-vous coucher avec moi type, either. I'm talkin' fruit spread. It's tantalizingly sweet-tart flavor with luscious bits of candied peel and fruit are calling to me with siren song.

Alas, the old stand-by of orange marmalade is just ho-hum. I'm looking for something electrifying!

You guessed it. It's April, and I'm starting to get a little huffy about the end of citrus season because I promised myself that I would make marmalade this year. I've been stalking the fruit section at my local grocery stores and I've found a few promising possibilities.

Ugli/Uniq Fruit

Grapefruit

Lime

Kumquat

Meyer Lemon

The citrus that is available to me is a little touch and go as far as ripeness and quality, but I can be choosy since I will be making micro-batches of each to see WHICH MARMALADE REIGNS SUPREME!

 Ok, so I really loved the original Iron Chef on Food Network beore they adapted it to the crummy Iron Chef America version that plays now. Who doesn't enjoy watching dubbed chefs make art out of nasty ingredients? I definitely do.

Anyway, before I continue, some of you may not know what a micro-batch is, exactly. It's a very small batch of whatever you're making. It can yield 3 or 4 pint jars, and is usually a tester for recipes, techniques, or new ingredients.

Or for people whose husbands won't eat marmalade 'til it's coming out of his ears. *Ahem.*

TO WHOM COULD I POSSIBLY BE REFERRING? 

No one in particular. No one at all...








But seriously. They're useful if your kitchen storage space is at a premium. And believe me, mine is.

Stick around and in the next day or so I'll be posting about my first encounters with Ugli Fruit, a tangelo that was originally discovered growing wild in Jamaica.

Will you be making any marmalade before citrus is "out of season?" What is your favorite kind? How do you like to eat it?

Unleavened Bread

Ask someone what they think of when they hear the word "Passover" and they'll probably say "It's a Jewish holiday around Easter." Technically they are correct, but more and more Christian families are starting to observe the Feast of Unleavened Breads as a way to delve deeper into their faith's history.