Practically free candy -- candied orange peel

How very frugal I feel in the month of January. The pantry and freezer are still quite full, enough that I need to spend very little at the store. We've just had our fill of goodies and party foods, so we really have no desire to eat out. And the things that I do buy at the grocery store, such as oranges, have so many ways to get the most bang for our buck.

Here's the candy that I made last week that was so yummy, and soooooo cheap! Candy made out the part of the fruit, that most people toss into the garbage or the compost.

Candied orange peel, so yummy, so frugal.

I follow the Joy of Cooking's recipe for Candied Citrus Peel, although I don't roll mine in powdered sugar as a final step, but spread the pieces of candied peel out on waxed paper, and allow to dry out for about 1 day.

Some of this glazed orange peel we eat as is.

The best looking pieces I dip in melted dark chocolate (stir in a 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon shortening to aid in the dipping). Boxed up in a candy box, these make a nice small gift.

And the remainder, I chop to use in baking, as a substitute for dried or glaced fruit. Once chopped, I store it in the freezer, until needed.

Chopped candied orange peel can be used in recipes calling for fruit cake fruit mix (the brightly colored glaced citron pieces and cherries). I make a bread at Easter that uses fruit cake mix, only I use a combination of chopped candied orange peel, chopped dried apricots, and chopped prunes from our plum tree. The bonus here is there are no weird colors. I never could get used to the green cherries my mother would add to fruitcake.

There is one aspect of oranges that I don't care for, peeling them with my fingers. Peeling oranges seems to split the skin under my fingernails from the nails themselves -- ouch! So I use a spoon to peel oranges. Here's how I peel an orange with a spoon.

I score the orange, with a knife, just through the peel, into quarters. I take a tablespoon, flip it over, so the bowl side is up, slip it under the peel, and slide it around, loosening the peel from the orange. It's very quick and saves my fingernails.

I now have an orange for eating, and orange peel all ready to slice for making candied orange peel.

Now, if only there was a way to do something yummy with banana peels.

Cheap entertainment -- our little game

My family is easily amused. Since New Years, our family has been playing a little game of sorts.

Just before New Year's Eve, my daughters and I went to the library, and checked out a huge pile of dvds. The limit is 10 per person. We imposed our own limit of 6 (okay, an extra one snuck in there somehow), bringing home 19 dvds, almost all comedies (we love a good laugh).

Our "game" began on New Year's Eve. With so many movies to choose from, and the five of us doing the choosing, you can imagine the trouble that ensued. Have you ever tried to make decisions by committee? After about 5 minutes of "what do you want to watch?", followed by "what do YOU want to watch?", "no, you tell me what YOU want to watch", we decided (by committee, of course) that a secret ballot option would probably be better for this situation.

Paper and pencil in hand, and all the dvds laid out for us all to see, we each wrote down our top 5 picks. Grace and I were the election officials and tallied up the votes. With no clear winner, it became evident that we needed a run-off between the top 8 dvds.

With our makeshift ballots (the back of a piece of junk mail) in hand, once again, the five of us each chose our 3 faves. Grace and I did our election work, supervising each other to insure no hanky-panky in the voting booth. No hanging chads here -- it was clear that there were 3 favorites in the collection.

After about 10 minutes of these shenanigans, I found myself running out of both paper and patience. And so, the head election official (me) made an arbitrary decision that the final run-off would be by show of hands. In the end, there was one distinctly clear winner. And for the life of me I can't remember what we chose, but I'm sure we were all entertained.

The next night, we held the same game, eliminating the watched dvd from the selection. We continued with movie nights until school started up again the next Monday, then picked back up with movie nights every weekend.

We are now down to the last few dvds that we checked out. I'm sure we'll soon be receiving a phone call from the library telling us we have items overdue (fortunately our library does not charge a fine for late turn-ins). We may even have to turn some of these dvds in to the library without watching them. Heavens! We can't let that happen!

We all agree that the voting process, complete with lobbying and bribery (just like in Congress), is just as entertaining, if not more so, than actually watching these movies. Who would've thunk?

And that's been our cheap entertainment for the month. I told you that we were easily amused.