Dried Citrus Zest Using Dehydrated Peelings - Makes a Good Tea

I have never tried this type of thing before but after my success with dehydrating the pomegranate peels here for tea, I decided to try some new things. See my post about pomegranate peels here. Dehydrating them here. 

While I was dehydrating more pomegranate peels, I decided to try dehydrating a few other fruit peels as I had the dehydrator going anyway. So, as I was eating mandarins, bananas, etc through the week, I would throw the peels onto the dehydrator just to see how they dried and figure out what I could use them for after they were dried. 

I know they get grapefruit seed extract and use that for healing, so I wonder if the peel has the same properties as they don't mold but usually just end up hard like a pomegranate does. I then started thinking about other citrus and what the oils are used for and figured that perhaps the peels could be used for zest, teas and other things. 

One thing I thought of, was that when you are trying to repel cats, you can purchase the "repellant" mix that smells like oranges. It is VERY good smelling but once it rains, it is useless. So, I think maybe, that even if the peels aren't organic, it may be useful to dehydrate them and then grind it up so that you can use it as a cat repellant for your garden areas or other areas that you may want to keep animals away from in your yard and home. But, it would keep it pleasant smelling for humans.

I dried the peelings for 24 hours at 130 degrees but don't think they really needed to be dried that long but I had the pomegranate peels on as well so I just left them on drying. 

Once they were dried, I put them into the vitamix and ground them up. You can use any blender that is capable of grinding dry items. I didn't like that they come out totally ground in the bottom but chunky in areas. So, I used the coffee grinder after using the vita-mix as I wanted it to be powdery so I can just make a tea with the powder and drink it all down as I do with the pomegranate peels. 

I actually ground the pomegranate peels in the Vita-mix and the coffee grinder as well, as at first, I was getting some chokable chunks after using just the Vita-mix. 

The ground mixtre was light and fluffy and would be great to add zest to any recipe. I suggest using organic citrus so you don't get the pesticides or you could just use and dry the inner peel. 

If you don't want to eat or drink it, but just use it for cat repellant, it wouldn't matter if they were organic and it smelled heavenly when I ground it making the entire kitchen smell like an orange grove. 

I think I will be drying all my citrus peels in the future when I get large amounts and will start spreading it around my gardens to keep the animals away! Organic solution are always preferred! 

Have a Blessed Day!