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.