LEMONS, LEMONS, LEMONS

Depending on where you live, you might have access to lemons growing right outside your home on a tree or within your community. You can pick lemons as you need them. Sadly, I access lemons at the grocery store. I sometimes get these ideas that I will make a number of things when I buy a big bag of lemons at the store. By big bag, there would be at least a dozen or so lemons. In the fridge, there was a bag of lemons sitting on the shelf for the past number of weeks and I could see that they were going to spoil or start to dry out. It was time to do something with them. There were at least 10 lemons in the bag.

In the past, I have frozen lemon zest in a small freezer bag and thought I should zest the lemons using my lemon zest grater. The next decision was what to do with the pulp and juice. After zesting them, I decided to put the lemons in the food processor. I cut them into quarters, checked to see that there were no seeds and put them through the food processor using the shredder attachment with the large holes. 

I decided to freeze the juice and pulp in ice cube trays. Using one tablespoon per cube, I filled one and half ice cube trays and popped them into the freezer. After freezing for a day or two, they are ready to be transferred into a freezer bag. There are a number of uses for these frozen cubes. You can thaw a cube or cubes and use them to marinate meat, fish or vegetables, in baking, to add to soups or stews that require lemon or to make lemonade. 

Zest in a freezer bag.

Pulp and juice after processing.

Using ice cube trays to freeze the pulp and juice.

SWEET POTATO BISCUITS

Recently the DH and I went over to our friends Bev and Wes for brunch. A wonderful selection of food including these sweet potato biscuits. Bev kindly provided me with the recipe. It is a biscuit dough with sweet potato. They taste much better than regular biscuits.

In making these biscuits, I know I used more than a cup of sweet potato and the potato was on the larger size of a small potato. Of course I eyeballed the amount of sweet potato and didn't measure it as I didn't want leftovers of sweet potato. After mixing the dough, I thought it was a bit too stiff so I added a bit more almond milk. I use almond milk instead of cow's milk. I also made the biscuits on the small size. I didn't add the nutmeg.

They are great to include in a meal or as a mid afternoon snack with a piece of cheese. The DH has been enjoying them.

Patting the dough down.

Getting ready to go into the oven.

I opened up one biscuit to see how it looks after baking.

Cooling on the baking sheets.

INGREDIENTS:

1 3/4 cups flour
1/4 tsp salt
4 tbsp baking powder
1 egg, slightly beaten
1 cup cooked, cooled, mashed, sweet potato
1/4 cup oil
1/4 cup milk
2 tbsp brown sugar or maple syrup
pinch of nutmeg, optional

DIRECTIONS:

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F. 

In a small mixing bowl, combine the flour, salt and baking powder. In a separate medium size bowl, mix together the egg, sweet potato, oil, milk, sugar and nutmeg. Mix well. Stir the flour mixture into the egg sweet potato mixture. Combine. If the dough is too stiff, add more milk or if too loose, add a bit more flour.

Turn the dough out onto a floured surface. To save cleaning up a messy counter, I used a sheet of parchment paper on the counter, floured it and put the dough on top of that. Pat the dough down using your hands or the back of a wooden mixing spoon, into a circle with about a thickness of three quarters of an inch. Cut into rounds using a two and a quarter inch biscuit cutter. I don't have a biscuit cutter so I used a shot glass with a two inch diameter. Place the rounds onto the baking sheet, one inch apart. Gather up the remaining dough and keep on cutting out the rounds until you have used all of the dough.

Bake for 12 to 15 minutes until golden. Makes one to two dozen depending on the size you make the biscuits.