Yesterday morning I was perusing the internet and came across a recipe for candied citrus peels. When I saw that I remembered that I wanted to make crystallized ginger and decided that if I didn't do it right then I would forget again.
I jumped on my bike and headed to the market to buy ginger, lemons, and oranges.
When I got home, I used my super high tech spoon method to peel about a pound of ginger. The instructions said to use a sharp knife to cut it into thin slices but I decided to use the cheese slicer that we don't like to use on the cheese because it makes the slices too thick. It worked like a charm!
Since the kitchen was already sticky, I figured I may as well do my citrus peels at the same time and only clean up once! Once again I found the cheese slicer handy to remove the excess pith from the lemon peels. The orange peels were a little less firm so it didn't work quite as well and I used a paring knife instead.
The best part of the whole project? CHEAP! The cost breakdown is this:
Little less than a pound of ginger- €1
2 big navel oranges- €0.60 (if I'd bought more they would've been cheaper but I'd be the only one eating them and a dozen was too many at once)
2 lemons- €0.40
1.5 kg bag of sugar- €1
I didn't use -quite- as much sugar as the recipes called for since I used slightly less of the ginger and citrus peels so the 1.5 kg bag of sugar was -just- enough.
P.S. If you are in my family, maybe you could um, forget that you read this? Cause uh, Christmas is coming up and these are most excellent stocking stuffers.
