Six things to do when you have an over-achieving lemon tree

Winter has hung up its dancing shoes and gone home. The warmer, longer days are a welcome change and the fence alongside our clinic is hung with intoxicating wisteria which signals that spring has truly arrived.

There are still bags of lemons in my fridge like stragglers at a party who hang around long after the champagne is drunk and the music has stopped. The parents’ lemon tree has been in overdrive until a couple of weeks ago but the start of September has been hectic, leaving me with no time to address the excess citrus issue.

Each morning, I drink warm water with a good squeeze of lemon juice but I knew that the lemons wouldn’t keep long enough to be used up this way. So as I always do, I turned to Dr. Google for ways of using them up before good lemons go bad, and the world wide web did not disappoint.

Here’s my pick of the suggestions I found:

1. Squeeze them and freeze the juice in ice-cube trays for later.

2. Use the juice and zest in salad dressings like in this Quinoa Salad, or this Zucchini and Fennel Salad or even this one with Warm Lentils, Walnuts and Goats Cheese.

3. Make Lemon Curd.

4. Make lemonade or it’s slightly salty Indian cousin, nimboo pani for those warmer spring days.

5. Make preserved lemons to use in tagines and other middle-eastern dishes. Here is a good method.

6. Bake the lemony goodness into these nankhatai biscuits, or these lemon marmalade meringue ones. Consider also this lemon tart or these lemon chocolate cheesecake pots with lemon peel powder.

While we’re on lemons, check out this ludicrously cute pics of tiny humans trying lemons for the first time.

What are your favourite ways of using up citrus?

11 thoughts on “Six things to do when you have an over-achieving lemon tree”

My father-in-law grows lemons on his dairy farm, and often comes home with SACK loads! I freeze the juice of some in icecube trays, as you suggest. But I’m itching to try lemon curd next time!

Deepa says:

September 11, 2013 at 10:09 pm

Wow, sack loads? You would have to put a whole day aside to squeeze those!

Reply
1. Habiba says:
  
  September 13, 2013 at 2:32 pm
  
  Indeed! I get the whole clan involved 🙂

I’ve never dealt with the lemon bounty, so don’t have any ideas for it. I do buy them by the bagful because I squeeze lemon over everything! and usually run out pretty quickly.
One solution might be to share them with friends…..