(Epi)-Curiosity – When Life Gives You Lemons

For the second year in a row my little lemon tree is producing a bumper crop. This year, the lemons are huge, juicy and abundant. Many of my friends have suggested I make limoncello, but I did that last year and still have leftovers. So this year, I needed another option for using this incredible, vitamin C-packed, delicious citrus fruit. 

Just as I was scratching my head and looking for lemon solutions, an email popped into my inbox featuring lemon recipes. Perfect! I clicked on the link and landed on surlatable.com. I’m a fan of their cooking classes (we’ve taken a couple) and I love browsing their stores. I browsed the half dozen recipes and decided since life has handed me a tree full of lemons, I’m making dinner. Here’s a link to the main course.

After reading through the ingredients, I headed out back and pulled seven fat lemons off the tree for scraping off the zest and juicing. Step one: make the fresh lemon curd.

I knew I needed to get the cake done first so it would have time to cool before frosting, so I measured out the flour, cream, eggs (so many eggs!) and lemon ingredients and got to work. A couple hours later the cake was assembled and chilling in the fridge.

As the day began to fade, I enlisted Greg’s help to gather and measure everything we needed for the main course. We sliced, diced, weighed, measured and prepped nearly 20 ingredients. Not fans of radishes, we opted to omit them.

The prep took more time than the actual cooking. In less than half an hour, the lemon chicken and orzo were steaming and ready to serve. The zest sprinkled veggies were perfectly crisp-cooked. We set the platter on the table, poured the wine (described as having hints of lemon and other citrus flavors), and dug in.

The final results were spectacular! We drooled as we savored the brightness the lemon added to everything. The flavors popped. The veggies gave just the right crunch. Even the wine paired perfectly. We will be adding this to the “success” folder.

We decided to grab the cake and pop over to a neighbor’s house to share dessert. WOW! Sweet, sponge cake with light, fluffy lemon flavors filled our mouths. Another taste-bud-dazzling success.

There’s a whole world out there just waiting to be explored. When life hands you lemons, explore the flavors with gusto.

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