An Abundance Of Lemons

I am fortunate to have two lemon trees that provide us with an abundant amount of lemons nearly all year round. Even after sharing our lemons with friends, family and neighbours, we still have a lot of lemons! Luckily, we like all things lemony and have a variety of lemon recipes to use up all our
lemons. These include lemon sponge cake, lemon meringue pie, lemon slice, lemon delicious pudding, lemon biscuits and lemon curd. I also freeze lemon juice in 1 cup amounts in zip lock bags. Grated lemon zest also freezes well. Unfortunately, most recipes that need lemons only use 1/4 to 1/2 cup of lemon juice in total. One of our lemon trees produces lemons that are so big and full of juice that one lemon alone can yield 1 cup of juice! So, to ensure that our lemons are all used up and not wasted (and because it is so delicious!) we make homemade lemonade.

We don't have a strict recipe that we follow (I say 'we', as this is something that my children love to make on their own) - simply combine lemon juice, caster sugar (it dissolves more easily than regular sugar) and water in a jug. Give it a big stir to dissolve the sugar and you're done! Roughly speaking, in a 2litre jug I tend to use 250ml - 300ml of lemon juice and then fill up with water. Sugar is added according to taste.

 Homemade lemonade on ice in a glass is deliciously refreshing on a hot day (and is even more delicious when you drink it through a straw with a slice of lemon on the side!).

Poppy, Rosie and Charlie Brown

Meet our chickens - Poppy, Rosie and Charlie Brown. They supply us with a wonderful supply of fresh eggs and eat up all our kitchen scraps.

Chickens also make great pets!

Their poo is great for the garden, particularly the acidic soil loving blueberry bush I recently planted. I love using eggs collected from our own backyard - they really do taste extra good and the colour of the yolk is magnificent. The freedom of not having to consider how many eggs a recipe uses is also something that I am grateful for. Of course, this means I can bake things like this chocolate cherry pavlova!

Yes - it did taste as good as it looks!