The Time I Failed To Make A Candle Out Of An Orange

So one of the tasks this month in The Weekend Homesteader was to focus on emergency lighting. In my (*cough* obsessive *cough*) research on the topic, I came across the concept of creating a candle out of an orange. Health-conscious folks that we are, we tend to have produce around, so I thought it'd be a great substitute should another snow-pocalyspe hit the area.

It wasn't.

This is the story of how I failed to make a candle out of an orange.

In theory, it made a lot of sense.

You start by slicing the orange in half. Then remove the innards of the orange for a tasty snack, taking care to leave the pithy stem intact. Even if you screw up on the first half, you luckily have another half with which to try again. There's a lemonade and lemons analogy in there somewhere.

This will be your wick.

...of failure.

Now fill your orange candle with olive oil, and allow the wick to soak it up for a few minutes.

Or twenty.

During this time, you can use the other half of your orange to create a cutesy top for your candle, cutting an air hole out of it.

Or you can use this time to empty the dishwasher and cut up the bell peppers for dinner. Guess which one I did?

At this point, you can start trying to light your orange candle!

What an excellent opportunity to practice perseverance.

You may actually get said orange candle to light for a moment! Amazingly, the smell of burning citrus is not as homey or comforting as one may think it would be.

Inevitably, however, my orange candle failed.

Maybe it was the kind of orange I used, or the pithy-ness of my pithy wick, but my orange candle was an epic failure.

Definitely not the best plan for emergency lighting.

Back to the candle drawing board.