We’ve had an email from Dani:

You’ve said to avoid composting a lot of lemon peel, what can I do with it instead? There isn’t any juice left, just the tough yellow skin.

You should avoid composting too much of any citrus fruits in one go because it can make the compost overly acidic and when the peel is fresh, can make worms pull little bitter pursed lips faces and you don’t want to annoy your friendly compost worms ;)

You can, perhaps obviously, grated the peel to use as zesty pieces in baking or make candied lemon peel for snacking/cake-decorating.

Around the home, lemon peel is handy for freshening up garbage disposals or dry the skin and use it to add a fragrance to homemade pot pourri.

Any other suggestions?

We’ve covered very, very brown bananas before but I was reading a Mrs Beeton-style book on home management from the 1930s the other day (as you do), and I saw a reference to using banana skins to clean brown leather shoes.

According to the hefty tome (which also includes chapters on engaging servants, etiquette for women and fortune-telling – all essential to the 1930s homemaker), rubbing the inside of a banana skin on brown leather shoes helps feed the leather. A bit of Googling seems to corroborate this and adds that the same idea can also be applied to silverware.

Any other cunning ways to reuse banana peel?

(We’ve covered orange peel before – that’s got loads of reuses…)