But...but...I thought I was done for now?!

Wrong! Do you see that pile of peeled lemons in the above picture? You are not done for today! After spending hours peeling and scraping you're going to be tired, especially if you do 150 lemons like we did. Your back is going to be hurting, your hands might be sore, but you still have work to do. Some people might just throw this pile away, but the Portuguese blood in me won't let me waste a thing. You should NOT wait until the next day to juice these, their flavor will change for the worse if you wait. It's time to bring out the juicer.

I stayed up until about 10pm that night juicing these darn things after my friends left. This juice is valuable. This juice will bring me lemonade in the summer, marinate chicken breasts, and be added to countless recipes through out the next year.

With this amount of lemons, I fill up my ice cube trays really fast, and shove them in the freezer. The next day I can pop them out of their trays and move to a ziploc bag and put back into the freezer for long term storage. After I used up my trays I was still left with about 2 gallons of lemon juice (anyone need highlights?!). At this point I start measuring into ziploc bags, 2 cups at a time. I label the bags with what it is and the date.As I fill up the bags, I try to get rid of as much air as possible, and lay them all on a baking sheet. I use four bags per baking sheet, and stack the baking sheets on top of each other in the freezer. Once they freeze like this, take the baking sheets out, and stack the frozen bags in the freezer nicely. Viola! You'll now have a nice supply of lemon juice to use through out the year.

But wait! You still have a bunch of lemon carcasses! What are you going to do with those?!

Throw them away! It's late, you're tired, you've done enough for today! Seriously, you should not put these in the compost bin, and you definitely should not put these in your worm bins (unless you WANT to melt the little dudes). The best place for these is now in your trash can, you've used and abused them enough.

How to Make Limoncello- Part One

It’s no secret that I’m a limoncello fanatic. I can pretty much blame that on my friend Bill. Every year I’d have an abundance of lemons and couldn’t get rid of them all (we’re talking HUNDREDS); until Bill says to me “My mom will take whatever lemons you don’t want for her homemade limoncello”. His family is Italian; limoncello is part of their heritage. And so our little “agreement” began- I’d bring him the lemons, and a few months later he’d bring me a bottle of limoncello. That agreement worked out fine until I decided to take a crack at making it myself. Thankfully, I got direction from someone who knows what they’re talking about- but the recipe, well, I had to figure that out on my own. Everyone makes it different. Some people use just vodka, some straight everclear, some let it sit for only a few weeks, others let it sit for several months. The following is what I’ve come up with, along with my “lessons learned”. If you find yourself with oodles of lemons, you might want to keep reading. I should note that the pictures here were taken with my Blackberry, my video camera, or my friend Scott’s iPhone. And the ingredients, well, these are from a batch that I more than tripled, using roughly 150 lemons. Yes, it was a long day.

For Part One, your cast of characters will include high quality vodka (No joke- the Kirkland brand at Costco is pretty darn close to Grey Goose- and at $27.99 for a 1.75 liter bottle, that’s a steal). The second ingredient is a bottle of Everclear, we’re talking the California version of it- 75.5% alcohol, 151 proof . I’ve heard of some states where you can buy this stuff at 190-something proof (my guess is Nevada- they break all of the rules!), but at that high of an alcohol volume I’m guessing it would taste more like paint thinner (not that I’ve tried- again, I’m guessing it’s just flat out nasty). A bottle of Everclear at my local BevMo runs me about $16.99. Hold on to these bottles, because you might want to use them later for storing your new creation. The star of Part One will be…..lemons. Shocker, right? There are soooo many different kinds to choose from. I personally grow Meyers lemons, cuz’, well, they are like the best lemon. Ever. Interesting factoid: a Meyer is not a true lemon; it’s actually a hybrid of a lemon and a mandarin. Did ya know that? Pretend that you didn’t and I just taught you something new. If I’m armed with 1.75 vodka, and 750ml of Everclear- I would then grab about 40 lemons. When I say lemons, I mean organic, homegrown- not the wax covered things you get at the grocery store. For this recipe you want the outside of lemons. Most pesticides that are applied to commercially grown citrus reside on the outside of the lemons. You want the oils off that lemon, so wax will be an unnecessary obstacle. Sure, you can use vegetable wash to remove that wax, but you’d also be removing some of those oils that you WANT. Even places like Whole Foods have started waxing their citrus, so if you can’t get them from someone’s garden, the farmers market will be your best option.
Another important item is your storage container. You want a LARGE glass container that you can seal. You need to think beyond the amount of liquor and lemon peels you’re going to add because in a few months you’re going to add more liquid, about 7 cups worth. The cheapest option is a large glass ice tea jug that doesn’t have a spout on it. You can usually find these pretty inexpensive towards the end of summer. If you can't find one that can be sealed, you'll have to MacGyver it with duct tape.
After washing and drying your lemons, use a potato peeler to remove the peels off the lemons. A nicer potato peeler works best, especially one with a decent handle (I use an OXO brand one), because you’re going to be peeling for quite some time. The most important information I can give you is to watch out for pith! Pith is the white part under the peel, and it can ruin an entire batch of limoncello. Pith is not your friend. For this reason alone I do not zest the peel, you are far more likely to get pith if you zest than if you do a peel-then-scrape method. The first few times I made limoncello I was lucky, but then bam, my last batch of the season last year I had too much in my limoncello and I basically wasted about 50 dollars in liquor, and 3 months of work. That’s why I now made the process even more difficult and scrape the pith off the back of each and every peel. That’s why I also enlist the help of friends to assist me in peeling and scraping because otherwise it would take me ALL. FRICKIN’. DAY. The peel on the left in the picture below is what you're going for, the peel on the right is not.

So, to recap, we get a large glass container that can seal. We pour in a big frickin bottle of vodka, and a legal bottle of Everclear. We then peel a bunch of lemons, and scrape off the pith. We then ADD the lemons to the jar, seal the jar, and put it in the pantry. We let it sit. We leave it alone. We don’t stir. We don’t take the lid off to “taste”. We leave it alone for 2-3 months. The longer it sits, I guarantee the better it tastes. I’ve actually done an experiment! The difference between a 2 month and 3 month limoncello is very noticeable- not only in color but especially flavor. Within a few days you will see the color of the alcohol change dramatically to BRIGHT YELLOW. Brighter than pee! No joke. This is normal. Put the jar back in your pantry, put a reminder on your Blackberry for 3 months, and forget about it. Then come back here in a couple of months for the rest of the recipe.

VARIATIONS: I should note that you can do this with most citrus. The mandarins are the hardest because they are so thin skinned and it's really easy to get pith. You can also toss in a half of a vanilla bean while it sits for a few months for a lemon-vanilla version or orange-vanilla version. I've even heard of people putting in various herbs- like thyme- but I personally haven't tried that...yet....

It's That Time Again....

Every year in winter when most of my plants are brown and ugly- my citrus tree's are putting off awesome color with their ripening fruit. This year our season is going to be short. You see, they're forecasting snow in the Sacramento Valley tonight. Possibly up to 3 inches. Um....we're not suppose to get snow. Soooo, what do we do? We scramble to pick everything that's ripe all at once, cover our tree's up with blankets, and pray that they make it! Here's part of what we picked today....

And here's part of what we didn't get to today....bummer!
Why didn't I grab these? Because they are way up high and require me to drag the ladder out. Normally I would do it but I was in a lazy mood, and did I mention it was frickin cold outside? I even took advantage of free child labor and got a few minutes of help from my daughter- until she got really cold and cranky and I forced her to go inside and play video games like a real kid (just kidding...sort of....).

So now you're probably wondering what we're doing with all of this citrus, right? Well, you'll have to come back here tomorrow to find out!