*Stop! Don't Throw That Orange Peel Away*
By: Gottin_Himmel
15 March 2013

Citrus peels: they're not just for composting anymore. On the other hand, composting them is certainly better than throwing them in the trash.

But, if you're throwing away the skins of oranges, lemons, limes and grapefruit, you just might be wasting a valuable resource.

I know. It's hard to think of them as much more than garbage in our modern-day world. However, I live in a northern climate and a major disruption in our food distribution network would probably mean citrus fruit would become scarce and expensive in a very short time.

If you've ever experimented with growing citrus trees indoors in pots, you've come to appreciate those lush California and Florida groves you see in television commercials. While you can grow citrus in the North, the effort would divert scarce resources during a widespread fan situation.

There are various recipes for citrus vinegars, preserved lemons, homemade lemon furniture polish and such that are posted on the Internet. It's fashionable to call these home-brewed concoctions "green." During the Great Depression, they were called "using it up."

Let's start with a very basic recipe for orange vinegar. You could use orange vinegar as an ingredient in salad dressing, if it's shaken up with olive oil and drizzled over a bowl of homegrown greens. However, the "green" movement has also come up with a pretty good way to whip up a batch of environmentally friendly cleaning products using our orange vinegar!

The process is so simple, it's silly.

• Save up all your orange peels when you've finished eating the fruit. Put them in a zip-top plastic bag and stick them in the freezer until you have collected the rinds of about eight oranges. Then, when you are ready to make a batch of vinegar, take them out and defrost them.
• Wash and sterilize a quart jar and a lid. Get out your jug of white vinegar.
• You don't have to remove all the white pith from the orange peels, if you will be using your vinegar just for cleaning. On the other hand, if you want to use it in salad dressings, removing the pith eliminates any bitterness.
• Place the orange rinds in the quart jar, crowding as many as possible into the jar. Pour white vinegar over the peels until they are completely submerged. Wipe off any drips and put the lid on the jar.
• Store the jar of brewing orange vinegar in a warm place for a couple of weeks. A sunny windowsill works fine. As a bonus, the orange peel-filled jar is kind of decorative. You can tell your friends that you just "out-Martha'd" Martha Stewart. Alternatively, you could just set the jar on top of the fridge.
• Once the two weeks is up, pour the orange vinegar through a strainer into a bowl. Use a funnel to pour the vinegar into an appropriate bottle and then discard the rinds. They will be pretty soft. So far, nobody has come up with further use for them.

For a good, all-purpose orange cleaner that performs as well as the ones on the store shelves, mix about a half cup of orange vinegar with a cup of water in a spray bottle. The mixture is great for a quick kitchen clean-up. Just spray the counters and the greasy stove top, wait for a minute or two, and then wipe away the grime with a paper towel or cleaning cloth. Surfaces will gleam because there isn't any chemical residue left behind. The acetic acid in white vinegar is also very good at killing germs.

If your house still smells like fish or cabbage or garlic after you've cleaned the kitchen, take that trusty bottle of orange vinegar with you from room to room. Spritz it around in the air. Your house will smell like vinegar for half an hour, and then it will just smell fresh and clean. If you have an allergy sufferer in the house, this is a bonus.

You will probably have lots of orange vinegar left after you made your super-duper citrus cleaner. Here's a simple recipe for furniture polish.

• Mix about 3/4 cup of the vinegar with 1/4 cup of olive oil in a re-purposed bottle. Worcestershire or A1 steak sauce bottles are a good size. Shake, shake, shake your booty, and the bottle, to mix small globules of the oil with the vinegar. If you want to get all scientific, you're making an emulsion.
• Put a small amount of the polish on a soft rag and then wipe it across the wooden surface you want to clean and shine. Just a little dab will do ya. Rub the polish into the wood, going with the grain. When you're done polishing the entire piece of furniture, remove any excess with a clean cloth. Wood really sucks up this polish, but any olive oil that may be left on the surface could get a little rancid over time.

A badly scratched 1930s-vintage wardrobe looked like new after it got a treatment with this stuff.

If you have a wealth of lemons on hand, you can use their rinds in the same way. You can even mix lemon, orange and grapefruit peels to make a general citrus cleaner.

Next up: salt-preserving lemons or limes.

Pickled limes appeared in Louisa May Alcott's "Little Women" as a favorite treat of one sister, Amy. This didn't end well for her. You'll have a better outcome.

• Wash and sterilize another quart jar and lid. Dig out your box of canning and pickling salt or kosher salt.
• Wash and scrub several limes or lemons. It's difficult to give an exact number because citrus fruit varies in size. The washing is important because it removes pesticide residue. Citrus crops tend to be heavily sprayed by commercial growers. If you can find organic citrus fruit, this is probably a better and safer choice.
• Remove the brown stem end thingy from the end of the fruit. It's not harmful, but it's a good place for mold spores to lurk.
• Place a lemon or lime on a cutting board and stand it on its end. Cut it into fourths but without cutting all the way through to the bottom. You'll end up with something that looks a little like a flower.
• Cover the bottom of the jar with salt, making a thin layer that's about 1/4 inch thick. Sprinkle the cut surfaces generously with more salt.
• Jam, really jam, the salted lemons or limes into the jar. Continue jamming more fruits into the jar until there is no space left. The salt extracts a lot of juice from the fruit, and there should be enough juice to entirely submerge the limes or lemons. If you don't have quite enough juice, you can fill up the extra space with a mixture of vinegar and water.
• Screw the lid onto the jar. Put the jar in a cool place for storage. They should be ready to use in about a month. The preserved citrus fruit should keep for about eight months.

Preserved limes and lemons are used in a number of Middle Eastern dishes. Small pieces of rind are incorporated into grain-based dishes, such as couscous and tabbouleh (cracked wheat).

Preserved lemon rinds are used in making gremolata, a very tasty combination of lemon peel, garlic and parsley that's one of the mainstays of northern Italian cooking. Rub some gremolata on a chicken before you roast it and you'll understand why the Italians are happy people.

The whole preserved fruits can be used to stuff chicken or whole fish. You might try using them in a lamb dish in combination with rosemary and garlic.

The citrusy brine can be used in salad dressings and sauces.

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