Misty Moisty November Morning

. . . and then in the afternoon . . .

What Are You Reading . . . Aside from Blogs?

One of the students in my writing class asked what the other students were reading. It's a valid question -- what we read informs what we write.  When critiquing someone's work, it's useful to know what they read.

At the moment, I'm reading THE CARTOON HISTORY OF THE MODERN WORLD -- a painless way to brush up on history --  and on my Kindle I've devouring Eula Biss's ON INOCULATION  -- which is so good that I'll be doing a blog post on it when I finish.

The books above are on my TBR (to be read) list,  I generally love Kingsolver's work and began listening to THE LACUNAE only to lose the thread about half way through. I want to give it another chance. STARMAKER is something I read over forty years ago -- I remember being profoundly affected by it-- I wonder if I'll feel that way again. 

So many books -- so little time. I've been purging my shelves -- the pile at the bottom is going to the library book sale.  And there are many other shelves to visit . . .

For me, that's a large part of the pleasure of the KIndle -- I can buy a new book without having to worry about shelf space. . . and if the Kindle fails, there are plenty of old favorites right at hand.

Cue Johnny Cash . . .

And play that burning Ring of Fire . . .

Assorted photos . . .

most of which probably have a country song to match . . .

songs about old log barns and train tracks . . .

 winding roads, outhouses . . .

But back to that ring of fire . . . any guesses what's burning here? 

Cue Leonard Cohen . . .

Don't Throw That in the Compost! -- Candied Citrus Peel

I am known to be somewhat cheap  frugal -- so it was with great delight that I discovered this easy (though a bit time-consuming) way of making that investment in sometimes pricey citrus stretch a bit more. 

Now that that good tomatoes aren't available, we like grapefruit sections in our salad and I was about to toss the peels into the compost when I remembered going with my grandparents many, many (65-ish) years ago to a shop on the road by an orange grove that sold citrus and various citrus products. I remembered two old (ha) ladies dredging peels in sugar. . .  

and I found a recipe in the Tampa Junior League's Gasparilla Cookbook. 

You begin by removing the peel and slicing it into strips. What you see in these pictures is the product of four small grapefruit -- as well as the hulls from two oranges and three lemons (previously squeezed for juice and set aside in anticipation of transformation.)

Put the sliced peels in a big pot, cover with water, and bring to a boil.

Drain and repeat two more times.

After the third draining, return to a wide bottomed pot, add water (say four cups) and sugar (two cups)  and bring to a boil. You can adjust the amount of water and sugar to just cover the  peel -- as long as you maintain the 2:1 ratio.

Boil till there is only about a tablespoon of liquid left. Stir frequently. Near the end, there may be some browning -- no worries, the browned bits taste good. But don't overdo it.

Put on a rack to cool. I separate the pieces (a tedious, fiddly, and sticky operation that involves long tweezers.)

Then I roll them in granulated sugar -- and this pretty much has to be done one strip at a time, pressing into the sugar or it won't stick well. 

I don't really have a sweet tooth but I find these kinda addictive -- I made a flourless chocolate cake for our anniversary dinner the other night that I served with a raspberry puree-- the next day I tried a piece with one of these strips cut up and sprinkled atop -- oh, my!

Now I'm thinking a nice thing to do would be to coat one end of each strip with melted chocolate . . . I wonder if those old ladies at the citrus shop tried that?

 

And the Potatoes. ..

'Nip Trip