6 Fun Ways To Use Up Leftover Oranges
Most of us buy a big bag of oranges with the best of intentions. We could all use a little more fruit in our diets, but eating several pounds of oranges in a week is a tall order. If you have an orange tree in your yard, you probably find that it produces way more fruit than your family can use before it goes bad. Don’t waste any of it.
If you’re willing to think outside the box, that bowl of oranges can find a new life in a different form.
1. Make Your Own Orange Juice
If you have a juicer, now is the perfect time to use it. You can peel and juice your oranges for fresh orange juice that will last about three days in the refrigerator. Alternatively, you can seal it in an air-tight freezer container and store it for up to 3 months in the freezer. This is the best option if your family doesn’t usually drink a lot of orange juice.
You can thaw the juice and drink it, or you can use it for cooking. If you’d rather add orange juice to your recipes, try freezing it in a covered ice tray. Pop out a few cubes to make things like orange chicken or orange vinaigrette salad dressing.
You can combine orange juice with other fruit and a plant-based sweetener like monk fruit and create simple frozen fruit pops. They’re a great way to sneak a few extra servings of fruit into a picky eater’s diet.
2. Spiced Orange Cider
Make a half-gallon of homemade orange juice and slice a whole orange. Pour the orange juice into a simmering pot with the orange slices, a whole vanilla bean, three sticks of cinnamon, a dash of pumpkin pie spice, a spoonful of whole cloves, and a few tiny drops of almond extract.
Let the mixture simmer on low heat for about 30 minutes, periodically stirring. The end result is a well-balanced cider that’s a little sweet and tangy from the oranges. Vanilla and almond give it richness, while the spices add warmth. It’s a comforting drink for a cold or rainy day when you want to feel cozy.
Adults might enjoy their spiced orange cider with a little bit of bourbon and amaretto if they choose to indulge.
3. Create a Versatile Home Fragrance
Some smells are inherently tethered to a season. Aromas like cinnamon make people think of autumn and winter. Coconut is the unofficial smell of summer, and lilac and rose are the aromatic anthems of spring. Orange can go in almost any direction.
Orange and jasmine smell like spring, while orange and vanilla create a summery dessert fragrance that smells good enough to eat. Combining orange with cranberry creates an autumnal scent. Orange and cinnamon evoke the spirit of the winter holidays. The possibilities are almost endless.
You can dehydrate the zest from your leftover oranges and combine it with other dehydrated fruits, flowers, or spices. You can also combine them with essential oils.
Add the dry ingredients and essential oils to a bottle and pour the bottle half full of isopropyl alcohol or witch hazel, periodically shaking the bottle to incorporate the ingredients. The alcohol will absorb the essences. Then, fill the rest of the bottle with water, leaving enough room to shake it again.
When the spray is released into the air, the alcohol will evaporate quickly. It will leave behind the aroma of your orange home fragrance concoction.
4. Clean With Oranges
Most people associate the aroma of pure orange rinds with cleanliness. There’s something about the vibrant scent of citrus that makes a house smell like it’s been well tended to.
There are several ways that you can clean your house with vinegar. The easiest way is to put orange peels and white vinegar into a spray bottle. Give the vinegar a day or two to take on the aroma of the orange.
You can safely clean many household surfaces with this solution, and it also works great to fight drain odors. Spill a little bit down your garbage disposal and turn it on for a few seconds.
5. Infused Sugar or Honey
Orange-infused sugar and honey are great sweeteners for tea and baked goods. They’re also incredibly easy to make. All you need to do is put fresh orange rinds in a container with honey or sugar and let the mixture sit for a week or two. Remove the peel and use it like you’d use any other sugar or honey.
6. When Life Hands You Oranges, Make CBD
You won’t be able to do this one at home, but we can do it for you. Peels takes leftover orange peels and turns them into bioidentical CBD, and we use their aroma to do that. Our proprietary process is called cyclic terpene assembly, and it works to turn the terpenes left behind in the orange peel into something a lot more valuable.
Terpenes are aromatic compounds produced by plants. Orange peels and hemp plants contain a lot of the same terpenes. We’re able to convert the terpenes in orange peels into CBD without any THC. There’s no THC in oranges, so there’s no THC in Peels. This makes Peels suitable for a wider variety of people, as not everyone can use CBD products that contain small amounts of THC.
If you’re interested in the holistic wellness benefits of CBD, Peels is ready to become a part of your wellness ritual.
Sources:
The Food Science Behind Juicing and How to Get Started | Science Meets Food
15 Orange Juice Cocktails to Try | A Couple Cooks
Why do we associate citrus smells with being clean? | Science Focus
Bioavailability and antioxidant effects of orange juice components in humans | PubMed