LIVING
LIFE WITH LEMONS
We have a most beautiful healthy lemon tree which is
currently heavily pregnant with fruit.
This mother tree produces
lemons twice a year, around April and October, brilliant yellow,
swollen lemons which exude the freshest, lemony aroma.
Our lemon tree is a happy tree
because it is allowed to be just the sort of tree it wants to be.
We do not medicate it or even prune it; we simply water it
during the hot, dry months
Here in Aegina, I still derive
pleasure from asking the family to go out and pick some lemons.
Once they are picked up from the ground or plucked from the tree,
I love observing their colourful brilliance and when I slice a
knife through their un-waxed skins, the most wonderful
astringent smell wafts around the kitchen. Such versatile fruit,
their uses are numerous. For example:
I recently squeezed 50 lemons
and used the juice to produce the tastiest lemonade which I
combined with root ginger.
I also filled another bottle
with unsweetened lemon juice which I use to add to orange juice
to augment the vitamin c levels. Being readily available in a
bottle, it is on hand for all sorts of recipes as well as for
pouring over salads.
Excess juice was put into ice
trays and has since been frozen into ice-cubes( which slip
neatly into gin and tonic).
Feeling particularly domestic,
I boiled the lemon skins in water for half an hour and then
allowed them to cool. The water was quite oily but smelt
exquisite, so I decanted some of it into glass bottles and added
a small quantity of olive oil. These now stand in the bathroom
to be used as shower gel.
The lemon skins are kept in
the fridge which our teenagers use to rub into their facial skin
( when advised by mother) This seems to be an effective
treatment for mild acne. They are just the right shape too for
massaging and softening the hard skin on heels and elbows
More recently, I used some of
the excess fluid to make an ecological cleaning fluid.
This is what I used:
1 litre of lemon exudate ( the
water left over from boiling lemon skins)
A small cup full of cooking
salt
Grated shavings from an old
bar of carbolic soap.
Mix them all together ,pour
into a glass bottle and stand in strong sunlight so that the
soap shavings melt into the lemon water and salt.
Shake gently before use.
This solution leaves kitchen
sinks clean and sparkling without any need for conventional
bleach.
·
If you have any tips on uses of lemon juice, write
them down and e-mail them to
info@aeginahomeandliving.com
Alison Lorentzos copyright
2008
