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Recipe: candied orange peels

For many years we rented because we were in grad school, because post-docs are so short-term, because we lived in Southern California… All those years I cooked and produced vegetable and fruit scraps and bemoaned the fact that I didn’t have a compost pile of my own, in a yard of my own, to put on a garden of my own. Now that we’ve been in our own house for 2 years, I’ve been rejoicing in my own compost pile (well, compost bin – otherwise the winds would have my potato peels strewn across the next county) which sits in my own yard. I don’t have my own garden yet, but one day I will figure out what to grow in our 2-week growing season…

So it’s great that I have a composting system because I can reduce the amount of trash we take to the dump by half! Even so, I would prefer not to have to throw things away if possible. Since I was juicing oranges recently, a flash of brilliance hit me smack in the forehead and I decided to make candied orange peels. Mind you, I don’t dig on candied orange peels myself. I mean, I can stomach maybe one, or two – but that’s enough for the year. Jeremy on the other hand… he’ll sit there and eat one after another.

It’s a fairly simple process (but not a quick one) to make candied orange peels, but I never had a desire. In my pastry course, we did a massive candied orange peel campaign one night in a frenzy of garnishes and decorations. I loved that class, but it was fast-paced and because we divvied up the duties, I wasn’t able to get my hands on everything. All I ended up doing was peeling a dozen oranges and taking a ton of notes.