When life gives you lemons...

...make Lemonade...and lemon zest...and lemon/vinegar cleaner!  ;-))

I LOVE ordering things from Azure Standard. They have things there I can't get at the local stores especially organic foods. I don't order in the winter as often, because getting to the drop point to pick up my order is sometimes harder to do, but I couldn't stop myself from ordering some things the first of this month.

One thing I ordered was 10 lbs of lemons. Now, I really thought I'd have lemon juice coming out my ears, but I didn't get near as much as I thought I would out of them.


First thing I did was get all the zest off the rinds. I figured that could be dried and then frozen, so I could use it later when I needed lemon zest...like for lemon cookies (which are WONDERFUL BTW, especially once frozen for a few days...Orange ones are fabulous too!) or anything else "lemon" flavored I happened to want to make.

Next I got the juice out of the lemons and put most of it into little jelly jars, so I could freeze it for use this summer in lemonade. I thought for sure I'd have a ton of it, when I ordered those 10 lbs of lemons...but I only ended up with 6 jars, along with enough to make a batch of lemonade right away. Oh well...those 6 jars will be nice to have when it's HOT outside! ;-))


Once I had the zest and juice all finished up, I looked at the rest of the lemon, and thought hmmm, there HAS to be something I can do with these instead of just tossing them out to the chickens (who didn't really want them when DH DID take a few out to them. LOL). Then, I remembered I had read about soaking them in vinegar for a couple weeks then using the resulting vinegar to clean with. So....


...I had to try it for myself, although I didn't know if it would still work, since I took off the zest for other uses. I took one of the 1 gallon jars we have for milk and stuffed it FULL of the lemon rinds. Then I poured as much white vinegar over them as would fit in the jar, put the lid on and stuck it over on our wood cook stove by the window to soak for a few weeks.

I already use vinegar to clean with at times...but this way I can have the added benefit of the lemon in it too! Hopefully it will still work good, since the zest was off most of the lemons. LOL Only time will tell!

It's to bad I can't place another order for a couple months, I'd be tempted to get me another 10 lbs of organic lemons, so I could double what I put in the freezer for later use!  Looking forward to spring for so many reasons, but right now, it's because then I can get back to my monthly Azure order if I want to!

What's YOUR favorite thing to do with lemons?  Feel free to e-mail me or comment on my blog and give me more ideas!