No Half Measures

20 Dec 2019

If you haven’t heard about them yet, Meyer lemons are a gift from the gods of sunnier places than Minnesota. They’re a cross between an orange and a lemon, and so they are juicier, have thinner skins and a sweeter flavor than the lemons you’re used to. This year, I ended up with 42 lbs of them.

Now, it all started out reasonable. Last season (January 2019) I processed 9 lbs of lemons and made about 16 pints of lemon curd. That wasn’t quite enough to give some away as gifts and also get me through the year, since I eat it on waffles every morning, and so I figured that it would be nice to process about 20 lbs this season.

In mid-November I went to Aldi and noticed that they had a box of Meyer lemons in! Somehow I resisted buying them all right there, probably because I was shopping with another person. When I came back a few days later, there was only one lonely bag (which I bought), so I asked if they could order me some. I didn’t know how many pounds came in a case and the employee thought it was 6 or maybe 8 lbs, so logically I asked for two cases. They said they’d try but no promises, and to come back in two days.

When I came back the warehouse hadn’t shipped any at all, so with some anxiety I bought the 5 lbs they had. The next week I happened to stop by a different Aldi and saw a box of 12 lbs! Of course I bought that, because I was worried that my store wouldn’t ever get any in, but that’s when I realized that a “case” is 12 lbs of lemons. As my luck goes, a few days later I got a call from my store saying they got three boxes in, and did I want all three? Knowing now that I already had 18 lbs and I had unwittingly asked for 24 more…I said I was just fine with two cases. That’s how there came to be three huge boxes of Meyer lemons in my kitchen, and me with many, many days of processing lemons ahead of me.

To make lemon curd, I followed this recipe, but tripled (here’s my version). I estimated that I had (42*4) = 168 lemons (one bag had 5 smaller ones instead of 4 like everyone else, but there was also one rotten one, so it worked out), and each triple batch makes 5 1/2 or 6 pints depending on how juicy the lemons are so that’s 11 triple batches making…up to 66 pints?! Plus each batch takes about 2 hours to complete, but regardless I started in. It’s actually quite a fun process.

I quickly realized, however, that I either need a lot more friends or some different uses for Meyer lemons!

Luckily I was able to get lots of suggestions, and between December 1st and December 18th I made 2-3 triple batches of lemon curd every weekend and started baked goods in between.

Here’s the final tally:

• 53.5 pints of lemon curd
• 1/2 gallon lemonade (from Cooking on the Weekends)
• 1 batch limoncello (from travlinmad)
• 2 loaves of lemon poppyseed bread (from Browned Butter Blondie)
• 2 shaker lemon pies (from baking-sense)
• 7.5 half-pint jars of marmalade (from Simply Recipes)
• 2 lemon almond cakes (from Sunset)
• 1 9x13” pan of lemon bars (from foodiecrush)
• 1.5 cups of juice leftover

I also discovered that the lemon curd can be used to make more bars and lemon sorbet! Good thing I made so much of it, right?

Here’s what I learned from all of this:

• Make sure you know how many lemons are in a case. I don’t usually admit that I’m in over my head, but there were moments.
• Get yourself some no cut gloves. My thumbs are incredibly happy to not be zested repeatedly

All in all I think I bought six 30-packs of eggs. So now what do I do with 150 frozen egg whites?! (In all honesty I threw some out. My freezer is full. Send help, and recipes that take more than 4 egg whites.)