Yesterday while I was in town on errands,  I was blessed with two boxes of culled produce from the locally owned grocery store.  The boxes included two 3 pound bags of mandarin oranges, two bags of green grapes, a bag of romaine hearts, several bagged salads, peaches and a head of iceberg lettuce. I removed the grapes from the stems and had two gallon baggies to freeze. I love oranges but six pounds of them would be a bit much to consume. I decided to make another batch of orange peel vinegar. I made a batch in the spring and I do need more. I didn’t include in the photo was a batch of lime vinegar I was making.  I use a glass fermenting weight in the mason jar to hold the peels under the top of the liquid. The remaining peels will be dehydrated then ground into orange peel zest. I am freezing the orange segments.   Hat tip to @Pinball Preparedness channel on Youtube for the recipe! Any fruit or herb can be made in homemade vinegar. This is a  link to Pinball’s video.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFjt0O2BOw0

I used a half gallon wide mouth mason jar. Fill the jar ¾’s full with the orange peels. Add ¼ cup of sugar. Ideally, I use pure cane sugar since it is not GMO but if you have beet sugar that will work also. Fill the jar with filtered water (I use my Berkey water.) until the peels are covered. Put the lid on an shake to dissolve the sugar. Remove the lid. I use a glass fermenting weight to keep the peels under water. Cover the top of the jar with a paper towel, coffee filter, cheesecloth or pieces of an old clean tee shirt and secure with a rubber band.  I like to use the tee shirt pieces because any fruit flies that may gather cannot get into the jar.  Place on the kitchen counter and stir everyday with a chopstick or a wooden BBQ skewer for two weeks.

After two weeks strain out the peels and put liquid into a different jar. Cover with an appropriate lid and place in a dark cool place for six weeks.  This vinegar is awesome in salads!

There are so many uses for vinegar around the home and homestead. Books have been written about them. In fact I have a small book printed in 2008 and titled “Over 100 Helpful Household Hints that use Heinz Vinegar”. Here are some for the homestead. To kill fire ants use a 1 to 1 ratio of water and vinegar. To kill weeds use one gallon of vinegar, 1 cup of salt, 2 tablespoons of Dawn dish soap. Vinegar will take rust off tools. Vinegar will clean stains off clay garden pots. To acidify garden soil you can use 1 gallon of water to 1 cup vinegar.