Seasonal Spotlight - Lemons
It's citrus season. So many wonderful citrus fruits coming into abundance in South East Queensland at the moment - lemons, mandies, oranges..
Actually, its a bit of a furphy that there is a season for lemons, as lemon trees flower continuously and have fruit in various stages of development most of the year.
While our lemon tree currently has about 15 lemons, a lemon tree can apparently produce as many as 3000 lemons a year!
Citrus is native to southern China and Southeast Asia and has been around for around 4000 years. Citrus is one of the original super foods - having a boon late 1800s with the discovery that citrus juice cured scurvy. Of course it was later found that a substance in lemons that we call Vitamin C, does a lot of very helpful things in the human body.
Lemons are best stored at room temp, where they will keep about 2 weeks. If stored in the fridge, they'll keep about six weeks. Lemon juice can be frozen and stored for about 3 months.
What do you use lemons for? Some of most popular uses are:
- A squeeze of lemon in water
- Hot honey and lemon drinks - great for cold and flu season
- Lemon curd
- In salad dressing
- In yoghurt (with honey)
- Lemon cakes.
- Served with fish.
- Lemon with cinnamon on crepes and pancakes
Overall - lemons an a wonderful pantry staple. Their acidic nature makes them fairly unique in the foodasphere.
Did you know that you can use lemons to make a fairly simple farmers cheese? When life gives you lemons... make cheese! To see the process in action you can coming along to our cheesemaking workshop next Satursday 24th of May. You can book here.
In the meantime, happy squeezing.
Enjoy!
