I made that!

I am mildly obsessed with food waste. The more I cook/bake (and the poorer I get), the more I try to use every scrap of food. The farm that I get my CSA box from offers amazing citrus every year, and this winter has been no different. I look forward to squeezing the juice for John once a week (mostly because I think it might be the only time he gets fruit, if it wasn’t for me I swear he would have scurvy), but I always look guiltily at the pile of peels leftover from all that squeezing. So yesterday when I squeezed all the citrus in the house – several oranges, lots of meyer lemons (gelato -hello?) and 2 GIGANTIC grapefruits – I saved the peels. Today I decided to candy them.

First I sliced up my peels into what looked like yummy, chewably sized strips.

Then I boiled them 3 times, each time starting with fresh cold water. That step supposedly helps to remove some of the bitterness as well as open the peels up to absorb the sugar.

Once rinsed of their bitter ways,  I poached the peels in simple syrup (equal parts sugar and water) for an hour, until the pith turned from opaque to translucent.

I drained the peels and gave them a good toss in some sugar.

Then they spent the night on cooling racks, to dry out.

So tomorrow we snack! And probably the day after, and the day after.