When Life Gives You Lemons...

...assume the air conditioner is leaking Freon.

This was my day to prepare lemons for various dishes later on. The worst part involved dropping whole lemons in a pot of boiling water for five minutes, which not only left a paraffin film on my good cookware, but also made the house smell "chemical." You'd think lemon would be pleasant enough, but believe me, vapourised into the air it is anything but. My son woke up from his nap and wanted to know why the house smelled of bleach. In fact, I was certain that yet another of our air-conditioning units had been leaking Freon (note to self: if you really think the air conditioner is leaking Freon, don't stand directly in front of the thing taking deep breaths to check). Nope, it was the lemon fumes, which changed as they dissipated through the house picking up and mingling with the scent of wet dirt in the semi-flooded storm cellar adjacent to the house. Or maybe it was the neighbour's cattle-God knows the 50 mph wind we're having today will waft some odours into the house. Anyway, it had better be a jolly good pie for all this smelliness.

The lemons are then sliced thinly and covered in 2 cups of sugar. They sit for an hour and then get stirred once and set in the fridge overnight. Tomorrow they will be baked into pie (recipe tomorrow). The idea is that the rind becomes like candied peel and is eaten along with the crystalised slices of lemon. Or something like that. If it ends up being horrible, I'll still post the results.

As I was already boiling lemons, I went ahead and made a jar of preserved lemons as detailed in this month's issue of Gourmet. The six boiled lemons are cut into eights and seeded then tossed in 2/3 cup coarse salt and placed in a jar with enough additional juice to cover. You shake the jar gently one a day for five days, add a bit of olive oil and then stick it in the fridge where it should keep for up to a year. I have no idea what I am going to do with six (much less, any) preserved lemons-I'm open to recommendations.

With any luck, there should be a rather exotic take on lemon pie posted here tomorrow afternoon.