Canning Pink Grapefruit

Did you know that a girl can get excited about a sale on grapefruit? It's true, you see I enjoy grapefruit a couple of mornings a week.  Now to make it easy on myself I buy the prepackaged fruit cups so I don't have to peel and I can have a healthy snack on the go.   The only down side is that the prepackaged snacks are four servings for $5. 

So when I found whole grapefruit on sale four for $1 I knew what I would be doing today.  A quick Pinterest search revealed that really all there is to preserving grapefruit is peeling, removing as much white pith as possible, packing in a light syrup and water bath canning to seal.  

To make a light syrup. I used 2 cups sugar to 5 cups water, heat your syrup and keep it hot and ladle it over your fruit.  Place lids on the jars, place in a water bath.  Bring to a rolling boil and maintain boil for 10 minutes for pints.  So for $3 I packed twelve Ball Pint Jars of grapefruit, saving millions!  Well, if you don't count the $13 for the jars, the sugar, the time spent.  But it was a simple task and now I know how to can grapefruit. 

While we were peeling the grapefruit, I saved the rinds to make Candied Pink Grapefruit.  This time of year you find many recipes that call for candied fruits. I use them in cookies, in a chocolate ginger biscotti, or rum cookies. The process for candying the citrus peels is to boil the strips for 10 minutes, rinse and repeat four times, that softens the peels and removes any bitterness. Next we cooked the peels in sugar water until almost all of the water has boiled out and the peels are infused with sugar. We laid the peels out to dry for 24 hours and then rolled them in sugar and packaged them up.  They make a sweet yet tart treat.  

Gracious words are a honeycomb,

    sweet to the soul and healing to the bones.

Proverbs 16:24