Lemon week
The Discovery Channel does Shark Week. Museums do DNA week. And now Jackie does lemon week.
The lemon tart from Sunday was the beginning of a lemon avalanche.
I usually spend a good portion of my weekends cooking a few meals that serve as my lunch and dinner for the whole week. But since I'm going home this weekend (YEA!!!) I figured I'd just scrounge up my meals from what I have in my fridge and freezer instead of cooking something new. So with my free time I decided to try a bunch of dessert recipes from my Luscious Lemon Desserts cookbook thanks to the mystery person at the museum who kept bringing in lemons from their tree. I took 12 of them over the course of the week and used them all for my baking spree.
Today I won't give you all any specific recipes. But as an intro to lemon week I figured I'd share a few lemon tricks with you.
Tip #1. When preparing lemons for recipes this is the order in which you should do things: (1) Use your palm (with a little bit of force) to roll a lemon on the counter. That'll make juicing the lemon a lot easier. (2) Zest your lemon. (3) Juice your lemon.
Tip #2. The recipes I used required a lot of zest but not a lot of juice. The lemons gave me exactly the amount of zest I needed but I had wayyyy too much lemon juice left over.
So what to do with all the juice you don't use? Freeze it!!
Just use an ice cube tray and place 1 or 2 TBSP of juice in each cube. Place in freezer until frozen, then throw the cubes in a freezer bag. Next time you have a recipe that calls for lemon juice, just grab a cube (or two or three or more) and you're done.
Tip #3. When zesting a lemon with a microplane, it's easier to hold the zester "upside down." You hold the lemon with one hand and run the zester along the surface of the lemon. (Normally I'd hold the lemon with my left hand while grating with my right but I had to use one hand to photograph...)
I used to zest my lemons the other way (holding the zester still with my left hand and zesting the lemon with my right) but this works much better.
Tip #4. Throw the leftover lemon peel (after zesting) into the garbage disposal for a nice, natural way for a fresh disposal. For more random tips on using lemons for random house purposes (cleaning, disinfecting, etc) check out this site. Or for all you ladies out there, here are some beauty tips using lemons. It's amazing what you'll find on the internet.
Stay tuned for some awesome lemon dessert recipes this week!
Buen Provecho,
Jackie
The lemon tart from Sunday was the beginning of a lemon avalanche.
I usually spend a good portion of my weekends cooking a few meals that serve as my lunch and dinner for the whole week. But since I'm going home this weekend (YEA!!!) I figured I'd just scrounge up my meals from what I have in my fridge and freezer instead of cooking something new. So with my free time I decided to try a bunch of dessert recipes from my Luscious Lemon Desserts cookbook thanks to the mystery person at the museum who kept bringing in lemons from their tree. I took 12 of them over the course of the week and used them all for my baking spree.
Today I won't give you all any specific recipes. But as an intro to lemon week I figured I'd share a few lemon tricks with you.
Tip #1. When preparing lemons for recipes this is the order in which you should do things: (1) Use your palm (with a little bit of force) to roll a lemon on the counter. That'll make juicing the lemon a lot easier. (2) Zest your lemon. (3) Juice your lemon.
Tip #2. The recipes I used required a lot of zest but not a lot of juice. The lemons gave me exactly the amount of zest I needed but I had wayyyy too much lemon juice left over.
So what to do with all the juice you don't use? Freeze it!!
Just use an ice cube tray and place 1 or 2 TBSP of juice in each cube. Place in freezer until frozen, then throw the cubes in a freezer bag. Next time you have a recipe that calls for lemon juice, just grab a cube (or two or three or more) and you're done.
Tip #3. When zesting a lemon with a microplane, it's easier to hold the zester "upside down." You hold the lemon with one hand and run the zester along the surface of the lemon. (Normally I'd hold the lemon with my left hand while grating with my right but I had to use one hand to photograph...)
I used to zest my lemons the other way (holding the zester still with my left hand and zesting the lemon with my right) but this works much better.
Tip #4. Throw the leftover lemon peel (after zesting) into the garbage disposal for a nice, natural way for a fresh disposal. For more random tips on using lemons for random house purposes (cleaning, disinfecting, etc) check out this site. Or for all you ladies out there, here are some beauty tips using lemons. It's amazing what you'll find on the internet.
Stay tuned for some awesome lemon dessert recipes this week!
Buen Provecho,
Jackie
Lemons are probably the best fruit ever!
ReplyDeleteI'll personally arm wrestle anyone who disagrees with me.