When the round orange decorations appear on the trees in our street, I know that it is the Christmas season. In our house the Christmas baubles and tinsel come down again in the first part of January, but the orange baubles stay on the trees outdoors until they drop on the ground and get squashed by cars - well into March.
They have a certain smell about them, one that humans rely on to try and make biting insects stay at bay. (Note it does not appear to work in my experience. If it did the sheer volume of these baubled trees in our town would mean a total absence of biting insects.)
There are also yellow baubled trees on some streets, but far fewer of those and probably just as well. It seems that everyone we know also has one in their backyard, or knows someone else who has one.....and they all try to give away bags of yellow Christmas baubles.
Lemons. Of course they are lemons. I know that but you have to try and make them sound interesting when they are the only thing that happened in your life this week, and there are kilograms and kilograms of them in bags on your kitchen floor.
I have been taking my meals around and between stashes of lemons all week.
And F and Mr B are still making a sport out of squashing biting insects that make their way into our establishment. (We know they are blood sucking insects because when squashed they leave a large blood smear on the wall. We have yet to test it to see whose blood.....it might even be mine!) So the lemons haven't worked.
Mr B made lemon marmalade.
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F made pickled lemons.
Lemons got squeezed into salad dressings and ice-cube trays.
Squeezed out lemon skins are macerating in sugar to make a lemon syrup for pancakes... and I'm still staring at a couple of kilos of lemons. Mr B needs to start drinking a lot of gin and tonic.
Oh and did I mention the bags of sour oranges?? I sense even more marmalade coming on. We used to 'export' it to UK, but it might now be subject to Customs clearance and taxes when it crosses the Channel! 😉 The English family will have to get marmalade creative this year. Meanwhile I'm nearly swimming in the stuff.🙀🙄
Hari OM
ReplyDeleteOh my Cat, Tigger, you will hardly believe it but I was reminiscing to myself only yesterday how I used to get so many lemons and mandarins from neighbours from their Sydney gardens (and compost heap tomatoes and zukes...) and how I used to love cookerating them into preserves. One of my faves - but very time consuming, is lemon curd - and mandarins make good curd too.... and how very much I miss that. I resorted to buying a jar from the local supermarket recently. Blargh. Decent marmalade is pretty hard to get, too... so you may make fun of the 'baubles' but they are rather precious my dear!!! Hugs and whiskeries, YAM-aunty xxx
I forgot to mention the lemon curd. I recall a jar of the supermarket variety languishing in our UK fridge (in the days when F tried to hide my catnip in there) until it grew green fur. It wasn't well liked by my humans - even before it grew fur. Fz & Pz xxx Mr T
DeleteNasty biting insects here too. Can't believe they're still around.
ReplyDeleteLemons are everywhere but not quite as abundant as other years. We still have bottles of juice and bags of ice from last year's crop.
Don't like lemon marmelade but those bitter oranges give a nice tasting jam
I'm making marmelade rock cakes today
Mr Bs grandad liked lemon marmalafe so we suspect it was a nostalgia thing for him to make it. Marmalade rock cakes sound interesting - are they a Greek thing or a kiwi thing?
DeleteA found-it-on-the-internet thing. I was looking for some way to use up grapefruit marmelade no-one wanted
DeleteHmmmm grapefruit marmalade is a 'marmite' food. Some love it, some hate it, no one is in the middle.
Deleteoh lemons, my favourite thing about Winter, so necessary when the family is down with flu bugs and germs, sometimes i make lemon honey from them
ReplyDeleteA nice, juicy story today Tigger.
ReplyDeleteNot a juicy as a nice fresh mouse....
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