Friday afternoon, the barn was flooded with clementines from Green Groves. CSA members got fruit with pretty skin, but there was still plenty that had blotches from the cold that didn’t look as nice. The fruit inside was still good to eat — but it was way more than everyone could or would want to eat.
So, time to pull out the very useful antique juicer (farm manager Muriel blogged about using it here on the Bee Heaven Farm blog).
Fresh squeezed clementine juice!
The sections were squeezed and drained and squeezed some more to get every drop of juice, which was poured into ice cube trays for freezing. It can be used as an ingredient or reconstituted into juice.
The peels weren’t wasted either. Intern Michael trimmed the bad spots and then sliced the peels carefully into thin strips. Those went on dryer racks to get dehydrated. The dried peels can be used in stir fries, soups and other dishes where you might want a bit of citrus zing.
Slicing clementine peels for drying
Not sure what happened to the squeezed fruit pulp. Perhaps its destiny was the compost heap, but I’m sure that with a little imagination, one could find a delicious use for it also!
Kudos to you for this labor intensive job!! Those clementines are so small, how much juice do you actually get out of one?! You are a better woman than I am! haha!
Oh wait a minute, you just watched some poor intern do this! Good for you! haha!
Farm manager Muriel was doing this work (those are her hands in the picture). It really didn’t take that long to do. The clementines were quite juicy and yielded 6 ice cube trays of juice when I checked, and there was still more fruit to process. Just think — your grandmother probably did this very same thing if she wanted fresh citrus juice… and she probably had better arm muscles too!