Making Candied Orange Peel

This comes with a story.

dredging (almost done)

My grandmother was not a good cook (there is a family tale involving her cooking a ham, "cloves" and "why does the ham go 'clink' when I carve it?"  Apparently carpet tacks were involved.).  My mother preferred to cook if they were both eating.  She did make certain things well, but dining at her house could be ... interesting.

One thing she did make decently was candied orange peel.  When I decided to try my hand at making it, I went looking for a recipe.

This was the early 1990's everything I found featured corn syrup.  I went looking through the collection of cookbooks. (6' of bookshelves, with odd items in it, like a Junior League cookbook from New Orleans, and Elinor Fettiplace's Reciept Book).

I finally found a usable recipe in a book that dated to WWII, I think my mother was given it as a wedding present, complete with "Wartime Ration Supplement"

Ingredients:

peel from 4 oranges

2 cups sugar

1 cup water

additional sugar (about 4 cups)

(this recipe scales well, so long as you keep in mind the 1 orange, 1/2 cup sugar, 1/4 water ratio, I made it for 200 for a coronation dayboard many-many years ago)

Cook the peel submerged in water until the peel is soft (I have found it takes about 90 minutes.  Don't forget about it.  The peel smells dreadful if it burns.  The peel will try to float, but if you put a plate or bowl on the top of the peel, it will stay submerged.

from l-r
pith, scraped peel, unscraped peel

Remove the saucepan from the water and pour the water off, and either reserve it or use fresh water as the 1 cup used to make the syrup.

Using a cutting board and a cooking spoon/tablespoon, scrape the pith from the peel and discard it, keeping only the zest/orange portion of the peel.  The pith is bitter, and the cooking makes the peel soft and seems to alleviate the bitterness.

sliced peel

Once all the peel has been scraped, cut it into strips about a 1/4" wide and put it aside.  It will fill a bowl, and drain any excess water.

Make a simple syrup of the water from cooking the peel, or use fresh water if you like.  When the sugar has dissolved and the syrup is hot, add the peel back in.  (even if you've drained the peel, there's a great deal of water trapped in it).

cooked until translucent

Cook the peel, stirring occasionally until the peel has gone translucent  (it will take over an hour).  Remove the peel from the syrup and spread it on a cookie tray on wax paper to dry overnight.  If you want to keep the syrup (it goes nicely in hot tea), filter it to get the last of the peel out of it, and to get rid of any other bits of orange that may have crept in.

drying over night

In the morning, dredge the peel through the additional sugar and put it in a sealed container.  It keeps decently in the refrigerator.

proof of concept waster for Montante Rule drills (draft)

My local practice has begun drilling the Rules (drills/katas) of Montante.  We've been using a variety of swords, some shinai, some oak wasters, some two handed swords, even a rattan greatsword.  The greatsword is too long and awkward for me (the grip is too thick for me as well), the oak waster has too short a grip, and the shinai have a slightly too short blade, and no guillons to differentiate between a revez cut from a talho.

I wanted one of my own, so I could work on this outside of the practice, but a commercially made wooden one was $100, and it was too long for my purpose (to use it within an SCA context, the limit is 60"), as well as being too long for me to use.  I'd rather not have a sword that's as tall as me, thank you.

I also wanted to have to stop having to use a borrowed blade at practice, and to have one that I could break down for travelling..

So, to the web to find out if the local big-box home improvement place had what I needed.  It did, but not in the correct size.  I wanted the option of a 45" "blade" the hardwood dowels were only 36" long.  Pine was available in 48" and cheaper.  If I was able to construct something usable, I could re-build it, providing I could find something the correct length (probably not from a big box, they're not specialized enough).

I went to the local big box this morning with my fencing gloves, and tested dowel sizes until I verified that the 1-1/8" dowel fit my hand (the 1-1/4" also worked, but going up much past that started getting too thick.).  I picked out the straightest available (not easy, another reason to go to a

Fittings came next, and I was destined for disappointment, the copper fittings wouldn't fit on the dowels, and besides, didn't have the 4-way joint I wanted.

pvc joint (the essential bit)

Off to the pvc boxes, there I found a 4 way joint, but pvc increases in quarter inches, and runs tight.  After some fiddling, I was able to pick out two dowels that would work, they could be wedged into the joint,  they weren't too badly warped, (some of the stock was) and I could fit my hand around them.

The total cost for the three bits was under $12.

Once home, I measured the dowels, 45" from the bottom of the joint to the end of the blade, cut.  The blade ended up being 43-3/4" (111 cm) long, although I would fit the wood to the joint before measuring it next time.

15" from the top of the joint to the pommel (the end of the grip).

I measured the quillons/cross guard pieces to match the approximately 3"-5" waste cut from the blade.

Partially assembled

Assembled, the blade looked decent, but there was nothing to hold it together.  Catastrophic failure of a sword is frowned upon, as is flying sword bits that might hit members of the practice.  I went to the garage and found some finishing nails, figuring I could hold the grip in the joint at least (the plan has always been to have the joint permanently attached to the grip).  I forced the grip into the joint until it entered  the cross opening, then considered how to place a nail so that the grip and cross guards would be held firm.  Eventually, I figured I could nail into the grip, with the end of the nail into the guard pieces, though it took 2 tries, and I ended up hammering the nail into the guard then pulling it so I could reverse it to nail into the grip.

It still wobbles a bit, but I think application of glue should fix that.

the assembled waster

Seating the blade was a bit harder, there was still the potential of catastrophic failure.   I placed the blade into the joint, and drilled a small hole through the pvc into the wood, and put a small nail/brad in.  This serves to hold the blade in place, and is removable. With version 2 I'll probably use this method to hold the guard and grip in place, but for the moment, glue and finishing nails will work

Ingredients:

2 - 48" long 1" dowels, or a size that fits your hand
1 - 4-way joint, probably pvc (make sure the joint will fit the dowels)
2  - nails (I used 2-1/2" finishing nails)
1 thin nail (I used a brass picture nail)
glue
tape measure and handsaw are givens