Drying oranges

All families create their own traditions when it comes to birthdays, Christmas, Easter just to mention a few.
When I was younger, we used to live in a big house (we certainly needed for the 7 of us) just outside of a big city.
I have so many beautiful, heartwarming memories from that time.
As that was the only and the last time when we all lived together.
All grew up, left the family nest, and now all this has become memories that I love to remember every year especially leading up to Christmas. 

So today I'm going to share one of my favourite memory that I have since I was  6-7 years old. I have never been one of those good little angels who is sitting at home with their mums and help them out so they can learn every trick in the kitchen.
I certainly did everything just to keep myself out of that.
However, during holidays I was eager to help to make something special for the family dinner.
My mum always likes to give an extra kick to every meal she prepares. Her idea was to chop and grid some dry oranges and add them to the Christmas dinner, then Christmas flew by to use the extra that left she added them into stews and soups.

I always loved that pleasant festive smell that we had in the whole house while the oranges were in the oven. Oranges are not only about cooking, but they also make beautiful decorations too.
We all sat down together in the living room while watching a Christmas movie(it was "always" Home alone) and we all crafted our own decorations.

Now that I'm older(hate this word) I like to make them just to remind me of this lovely memory I have. I use dried oranges to infuse my water, my hot tea or leave them on the side in a bowl as a potpourri.
No matter how u prefer it, this is something that could be your precious memory with your loved ones.

Follow these easy steps to dehydrate oranges:

1) The first thing to do is to wash and dry the oranges

2) Slice them into 1-2cm thick slices. As you can see on some of these pictures, I'm pretty bad at slicing, so after the first bunch I gave up and passed the slicing to Carl.
t's certainly handy if you have your personal chef at home (haha)
If your oranges have seeds, pick them out.

3) Pat dry with a clean tea towel

4) Arrange the slices on a metal cooling rack over a baking tray so that air can circulate around them quickly and the oranges won't burn.
5) Set the heat to about 110 degrees, if you want you can go with a higher temperature to finish this project in a shorter time. It will take about 3-4 hours for the oranges to dry.

6) Turn them over every 30 mins, once there is no sign of moisture take the oranges out of the oven and place them into a bowl. Let the slices to dry further for a few days somewhere hot, I usually place them near the radiator.

7) Once the slices are crispy, I store them in airtight containers with tight-fitting lids.
I bought mine from Ikea, they are super cheap and excellent quality.

Have a lovely day everyone! Hope to see you next time.

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