Thanks all for your comments and suggestions. As I mentioned, the kumquat marmalade set up perfectly the first day but I thought it too sweet. The next day, when I tasted it with a fresh palette....I thought it was amazing. Really. kumquat peel is the bomb for good tasting citrus peel. I still wanted to make lower sugar marmalade. So, today I put up a batch of grapefruit and meyer lemon marmalade ala June Taylor. She's the goddess of all jammy things in the Bay Area and is all about "letting the fruit shine through" and lower sugar and of course, no pectin. I used her recipe and instructions from the NY Times. I'm laughing now because after all that peeling and chopping and extracting natural pectin, etc., the recipe used the same amount of sugar and produced exactly the same amount of marmalade as my made up recipe for the kumquat marmalade. It's a little less sweet because of so much lemon and the bitter grapefruit peel. But every spoonful is the same sugar content as my original try. I'm experiencing beginner's luck because it set up well too. So, marmalades are sweet. I get it now. :) Kristine

I was going to try this tomato marmalade recipe from The Good Cook: Preserving. Not much citrus in it, just some lemon juice. I don't know how it's supposed to taste, either; just have to do something with all these ripe tomatoes ... TOMATO MARMALADE To make about 2 pints 1-1/2 lb. large ripe tomatoes, peeled, halved, and seeded 2-1/2 cups sugar 1 cup water 6 tbsp. strained fresh lemon juice Boil the sugar and water together for about five minutes to make a thick syrup. Stir in the tomatoes and the lemon juice. Stirring frequently, cook over medium heat for about 45 minutes, or until the tomatoes are translucent and the syrup thick. Put in jars and cover. Process. VICTORIA SERRA TIA VICTORIA'S SPANISH KITCHEN The recipe refers you to the pages in the book about processing ... for marmalade, it says: Hot-pack. Process in a boiling water bath; pints, 15 minutes.

trailrunner, I have this one from RobinKate, my family loves it. I'm thinking it would be very pretty made with the white tomatoes I grow every year: Tomato Orange Marmalade Adapted from Gourmet 2003 It is important that you use the best quality tomatoes you can for this recipe. You can use any color of tomato you want, a mix is especially striking. Don't use paste tomatoes as they do not have enough liquid in them. If need be in winter you can make a batch using 1 quart jar of home canned crushed tomatoes. However supermarket tomato look alikes will not work. A friend tried that once and when I asked how it was she replied, "Well... I ate it." Which meant no one else would. 3 pounds peeled, cored and chopped ripe heirloom tomatoes, including juices (the weight is after peeling, coring and chopping, including the weight of any juices) 3 cups sugar 2 organic juice oranges, washed 1 organic lemon, washed 1/8 tsp salt Place peeled, chopped tomatoes and their juices in a 5 to 6 qt or larger, wide pot, (the ingredients will all fit in a smaller pot but you need to leave space so they will not bubble over, ideally it should be at least 9 1/2 inches wide to encourage rapid evaporation). Slice oranges and lemons as thinly as possible, including peel and pith. I slice mine on my mandolin using the thinest insert and then remove all the seeds and slice the rounds into 4 pieces (and the pieces that are only peel I julienne, you can also quarter the fruit and then slice it as thinly as possible with a knife. Place the lemon and orange slices in the pan with the tomatoes, checking again for any citrus pits you missed, in the pot with the tomato. Add the sugar and salt and place over moderate heat while stirring until the sugar has completely dissolved. Turn the heat to high and continue to cook until the setting point is reached.* Using a canning funnel ladle hot marmalade into hot jars leaving 1/4 inch headspace. Run a bubble wand or small knife around the inside of the jar to remove air bubbles. Use a damp paper towel to clean the surface of the rims, place a clean lid on top, add the rings and tighten as tightly as you can with your hands. Place the filled jars in a water bath canner and process for 10 minutes. After the 10 minutes is up remove the lid, turn off the heat and leave to rest for 5 minutes before removing the jars to cool on a towel or receiving blanket. I don't know if this is the one you are looking for, but it's good. Thanks RobinKate, I know you're out there somewhere! Annie

Well, *I* was put in charge of the soup today! They'd already dumped the gallon of yellow tomato puree and some raw squash, chopped red tomatoes in when I finished unloading the car, so I pulled most of the red tomatoes out, grilled some sweet bell peppers, onions, garlic (I think, they were already all chopped and mixed together) and leeks, put those in, a gallon of water, some grilled yellow squash, and some chopped yellow tomatoes I brought (skins and all). Cooked until squash was tender (I was afraid we only had a couple of hours, but it turns out we weren't eating until 2pm so it cooked for more like 4 hours), then added some lemon juice, brown sugar (didn't have white sugar), salt, black pepper, and torn chard and beet greens (no stems). Oh, and a quart of porcini risotto left over from last night. The other pot, I put the tomatoes I fished out of the first pot (turns out those should have been saved for salad, I didn't bring more today), maybe 1 pint of leftover tomato-basil sauce from last night, 3 quarts of oven- roasted peeled red tomatoes with juice (I finished at 1am), another quart of frozen roasted tomatoes, 3 lbs of frozen over-ripe chunked tomatoes with skins, 2 pints of frozen tomato sauce (unseasoned) from last year, 2.5 bags of frozen corn, more peppers (including jalapenos and serranos), onions and lots of garlic, and lime juice. The propane burner got turned up too high before I got all the liquid in (too many cooks DO spoil the soup) and I was scraping up black bits, so we transferred it to a 23 qt PC, put it on the OTHER propane burner that wasn't as touchy, we lost a lot of corn that had sunk to the bottom of the thin pot, but I added 2 cans of black beans with liquid, lemon juice, ACV, brown sugar, salt, pepper, more garlic, 2 quarts of tomato-basil sauce I found (I pulled the basil out), then ran to the store and got a jar of chipotle grill seasoning with cumin, garlic, and black pepper (going with the smoky/charred taste), used half that plus half a bunch of cilantro stirred in last minute. Served with fried tortilla strips on top. So both soups were "let's see, what do I have to work with?" Guess which one got more compliments?