#4 Sweet sour, sweet sour, sweet sour Grapefruit Marmalade

Today I popped into a local supermarket to pick up a few items and had a strange encounter.  I had just gotten into the check out line and was picking up my favorite trashy magazine to skim (sometimes I even pick longer lines so I have more time to read).  Anyways a older man switches lines and just as I'm getting ready to drool over Heidi Klum's and Seals split he decides to start a conversation that went something like this:

old dude: The lady in the other line was using a whole bunch of coupons.  Ya know how much money you can save using coupons?

me: oh yea, a lot i bet.

old dude: yea, once i was at walmarts and this lady bought a whole buncha stuff, like carts full an I asked her how much she paid and she said 9 bucks!  She had 4 kids I don't have any kids, I'm single cause I don't want any women taking my money.

me: oh okay (trying to hide my wedding ring so he doesn't think I'm out to steal men's money).

old dude: you know, it's like 60/40. Women take 60%!

me: oh wow, i didn't know that.

Now, this is the best part of the whole conversation because the day before my husband and I were picking out a type of cereal.  I am a huge fan of Golden Oh's cause they don't get soggy and my husband likes the Special K, cause i think he feels healthy eating it, but it get uber soggy fast (ew).  Anyways I didn't get my Golden Oh's that day cause they were in the "kids section", next to Trix and Lucky Charms and now I'm supposed to eat like an adult and have soggy cereal **pouts**.  So to continue my story:

old dude: yea, hey have you tried this cereal? (holds up a box of Golden Oh's) it doesn't get soggy like cheerio's.

me: (trying not to sound too excited) "I completely agree"!

The conversation ended there cause then he started chatting up the cash register girl.  I was like "hey back off girl, this is my old chatty dude".  Then again he may have been on speed.

So let's get into this thing we call marmalade.  Firstly, it is an excellent word that sounds like what it means.  When I hear marmalade I think lemonade, both are sweet but have a sour pucker to it. Oh and  while making this delightful marm, you must listen to this song:

Ingredients:
Adapted from The Cosmic Cowgirl.

5 Florida Ruby Reds
2 Tablespoons Lemon Juice
6 cups of sugar
2 vanilla beans

Directions:
Halve grapefruits and place in a huge mofo of a pot.  Cover with water and bring to a boil.  Reduce to a simmer for 2 hours. This makes the grapefruit rind nice and soft and I believe draws out some of the bitterness. Make sure you add water if water level gets critical (ie, grapefruits are not covered).  Drain water. They will look like this:

Soggy grapefruit= good, soggy cereal=bad

Then chunk up the grapefruit and remove seeds.  Put rinds/pith (white part)/flesh all into a food chopper upper. Chopper Up until it's as smooth/chunky as you want. See how chunky mine is?

Now you take all that chunky grapefruit and put it back in the huge mofo pot, along with 8 cups of sugar, 2 vanilla beans, and 2 tablespoons of lemon juice.  It'll look something like this:

Now stir it all together an make everything be friends with each other.  Then I let it simmer for about 30 minutes while stirring occasionally.  Once it is to the consistency and sweetness, to your little hearts content, take your sterilized jars fill em up and then process in a water bath for 15 minutes. 

I think I used really big grapefruits or something.

You checkin out my Vanilla Bean?

This marm is absolutely wonderful, especially if you like grapefruit.  Actually, if you don't like the taste of grapefruit you probably won't enjoy this, which is quite a shame.  I just ate some spread on toast with a bit of cream cheese, and it was eye-crossing good.  Leaves a great bitter/sour aftertaste.