Candied scurvy prevention

I'm riffin' on a recipe I tried for my friend Scarlett's boxing day party. I found the original recipe on the website for The Splendid Table. If you're not listening to that show, you're missing out. The recipe is for Limones Rellenos de Coco, or coconut stuffed limes. I found the recipe lacking because limes are very tough and, even with the boiling process, hard to chew. I decided to change the recipe while keeping some of the basic ingredients. Here is what I came up with, and I apologize for the weird spacing; I have never been able to get blogger to work for me:

Start out by slicing several lemons into stripes.

While you are slicing the lemons, have a pot of water on to boil. Once the water is boiling, add the lemons.

Boil the lemons until they are tender. Maybe 15 minutes? It's hard to say; my brain doesn't really process time and I am not smart enough to time these things.

After the lemons are tender, add a couple of cups of sugar.

Allow the water, sugar and lemons to boil for quite awhile, until the lemons start to turn translucent. Remove them from the pot and pour the sugar water into your compost. You do have a compost pile or tumbler, right?

Now it is time to work on the coconut. first, add 2 cups or so coconut to the pot.

Next, add about a cup of sugar and 1/2 cup of lemon juice from the lemons you peeled.

Now, stir it all together and cook it until the liquid has reduced quite a bit. Don't forget to monitor it, though, or it will burn. Not that I did that.

I didn't take a picture of the next few steps because I was tired from having to go back to the store at 10:00 to get more damned coconut. Anyway, let the coconut cool until it is cool enough to handle. While the coconut is cooling, slice the lemons into smaller strips, lengthwise. Once the coconut has cooled, roll it into balls, wrapping a piece of lemon rind around the ball.

That's it! I think it would be interesting to make the rinds even smaller, perhaps string-like and tie them around the coconut in interesting patterns. I also think that something else needs to be added to the coconut to make it less sticky. Any ideas? Another idea I had is to cut the sugar from the coconut and do sugar strings encircling the coconut tied with candied rind. I can picture it but I don't think I've explained it well enough. That might also be a two-person job.

Let me know what you think if you try my ripped up version of this recipe.