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Monday 13 July 2015

Lemons Lemons LEMONS! and Radishes too


As my husband rightly points out... I have a gardening problem. And that problem is that I never have just enough produce. As evidenced by the great tomato glut of February 2015 I always end up with
way too much of the vegetable I plant.

The reason for this is that I cannot believe that every plant I seed will actually grow (lingering trauma from failed gardening attempts in childhood). As a result I tend to over plant and cannot bear to thin out my crop either (they're my babies!!!). 

Fortunately with some good old fashioned know how (aided by the internet), I have managed to find a way to store, use and make use of every single excess veggie that has sprouted from the garden. And thus I present to you

What to do when you have over 20 lemons to use in a week!

Freshly picked lemons generally stay nice and juicy on the counter for about a week. 2 at most. Then they start getting this greenish mould or lose their juiciness and look old and shriveled. A good way to use them all up at once would be to make a massive batch of lemonade, however in the middle of winter, that refreshing coldness is not at its most appreciated. 

Over the last few weeks hubby and I have been exploring the benefits of a hot cup of lemon water, first thing in the morning. There are numerous articles about the benefits of lemon water but lifehacks has a good summary here

This gives me more reason to want to make our horde of lemons last longer so I don't have to buy some in order to continue the feel good experiment.

We each have a the juice of half a lemon in a cup of hot water each morning before breakfast/coffee/tea/etc and so far it's been working out pretty good. But I'm not here to expound on the benefits of lemon water. Lets say we haven't gotten sick this winter and we both feel pretty good. 

So to make the lemon glut last us for as long as possible we juiced about 10 of the lemons and filled up a couple of ice cube trays so that in the mornings we don't even need to bother with cutting and juicing. Just pop a cube into each cup and top with hot water. Easy Peasy! Also during the day if I want some lemon soda water I just fizz up some bubbles in the sodastream and pop the cube into the bottle. Slow release lemoniness. 

Unfortunately even with the juicing we still had a heap of lemons left. So I researched the best way to store lemons long term. Turns out that by sealing them into ziplock bags and popping them into the fridge you can extend the life (and juiciness) of your lemons by up to 4 weeks. 



So we're pretty much set for lemon water for the rest of the month to see if it keeps the winter colds away and improves our all around healthiness. 

Special mention...

...to my radishes which I've grown for the first time. I was expecting tiny little salad things which was the picture on the packet, also what I usually see in the supermarket but my radishes got huge. About the size of a lunchbox apple. They were also surprisingly sweet instead of spicy which went over well with the kids who crunched on them like carrot sticks. They were also dead easy to grow and seemed to sprout up in a matter of days and looked so pretty with their red bulbs peeking up through the soil. 


2 comments:

  1. You make me want radishes now. Perhaps I should look at getting some seeds!

    May I also suggest freezing some of the lemon zest for future baking projects.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ooooh you make me want to try hot water with lemon everyday now.. Anything to avoid the dreaded winter lurg..

    ReplyDelete