Watermellon Rind Preserves

SOoOO in my constant quest to be a true domestic godess Ive been making jam and jelly recently to take advantage of the summers bounty.Ive invented my own jam and jelly recipes.I made delicious strawberry,succesfully.Ive made orange maramalade,NOT succesfully.And lately Its been watermellon stuffs.To me there are few things better than a big ole slice of sun warmed,fresh from the patch watermellon.mmm.So I made watermellon/grape jelly.It was just WM but it never set and was too sweet,so not to waste anything after amking homeade grape jelly I added the rest of the juice to the pot.It gave it some wang at the end and is kick ass on a bisciut.Even the Whopping kind.{think canned you have to whop on the ocunter to open,but dont whop too hard,or you will have dough all over the kitchen.Thank goodness for the ten second rule.}.So,this time at the request of Neils aging grandad,I made watermellon Rind preserves.It truly is a pain in the ass.Specially since Ive never made it before.Not to waste,yet again,i hacked upt he watermellona nd cooked it down for jelly juice.we hacked,peeled,adn diced watermellon hide.I followed Grandads half cocked directions and said a prayer.Welp after cooking the boiling cauldron of sugar and rind it didnt quite look thick enough,so I took off the top and cooked some more.About 2 hours.By now my house smells like corn.Neil came up with that and we're sticking to it.Fonked up my whole house.Apparently one of the airvents that permeates the house is over the stove.this can be useful when waking up to cinnamon rolls or makeing homeade air freshener with cinnamon and cloves,but not so much on WM preserves.SO then after consulting with MY grandmother,I decided it was time to jar em up.I had let it cook so long I could have made hard candy.I had very little syrup left to pour over the now almost candied rinds.So into jars this small batch that took forever to make went.Upon opening a jar,its so thick you cant hardly scoop it out.Its like taffy texture,but not creamy.Think stiff sugar.We will see today if the fruits of our labor,I got neil to Help since it was HIS grandad who asked for em,if he likes them.I guess the women who thought of this had to use EVERYTHING they had.I guess Im blessed that I can toss my rinds into the tree line and make a sweetish supper for ants and other varmits that like watermellon.THe dog,we learned does NOT.I guess its all lessons learned.