I am known to be somewhat cheap frugal -- so it was with great delight that I discovered this easy (though a bit time-consuming) way of making that investment in sometimes pricey citrus stretch a bit more.
You begin by removing the peel and slicing it into strips. What you see in these pictures is the product of four small grapefruit -- as well as the hulls from two oranges and three lemons (previously squeezed for juice and set aside in anticipation of transformation.)
Put the sliced peels in a big pot, cover with water, and bring to a boil.
Drain and repeat two more times.
After the third draining, return to a wide bottomed pot, add water (say four cups) and sugar (two cups) and bring to a boil. You can adjust the amount of water and sugar to just cover the peel -- as long as you maintain the 2:1 ratio.
Boil till there is only about a tablespoon of liquid left. Stir frequently. Near the end, there may be some browning -- no worries, the browned bits taste good. But don't overdo it.
Put on a rack to cool. I separate the pieces (a tedious, fiddly, and sticky operation that involves long tweezers.)
Then I roll them in granulated sugar -- and this pretty much has to be done one strip at a time, pressing into the sugar or it won't stick well.
I don't really have a sweet tooth but I find these kinda addictive -- I made a flourless chocolate cake for our anniversary dinner the other night that I served with a raspberry puree-- the next day I tried a piece with one of these strips cut up and sprinkled atop -- oh, my! Now I'm thinking a nice thing to do would be to coat one end of each strip with melted chocolate . . . I wonder if those old ladies at the citrus shop tried that?