Plenty of lemons

The house smells of lemons.  We smell of lemons.  Right now it seems as if the entire world may well be lemon scented.

Today seemed the perfect opportunity to deal with the stockpile of windfall lemons from the trees.  It being our very first full year of lemon tree ownership we’re still getting to grips with managing the trees including when to harvest lemons to get the maximum amount of juice.  As a result of that, and combined with some high winds, we had a fair number fall from the trees.  About 50 or so.

The plan was to wash them, halve them, juice them and then freeze the juice in handy sized volumes.  Because the lemons had fallen we decided to forgo the zest this time.

It seem, having never juiced that number of lemons, we may have slightly underestimated the amount of time it takes to process that many lemons.  Several hours after starting we have a freezer full to the brim with lemon juice – a little over 4 pints (English pints so 80 fl oz all told) frozen in differing quantities.

There are lots of containers holding 4 fl oz for marinading meat for fajitas.  A good supply of 2 fl oz lollipops for lemon cakes and muffins and a dozen or so half ounce ice cubes for salad dressing and recipes which just need a small amount of juice.

The first third

The final two-thirds

A pint or two of lemon juice

As all this work was going on we could hear from the garden the sound of yet more lemons falling from the trees.  It seems unlike that we’ll run out this year.

Gin and tonic anyone?