Twelve kilograms of lemons..

We were running various errands (as they say in the US) on Monday, and I wanted to go to the fruitaria. Richard suggested we take the car, although I didn't think I wanted all that much. And, indeed, I could easily have walked home with the two carrier bags of produce I bought, even including some more walnuts and eggs.  I had hoped to buy a 3kg bag of lemons (in the one-euro bags) but although there were tomatoes, apples and more ready-bagged at this price, the only lemons were at the regular price of about 40c/kg, and did not look that great. I needed to make some more lemonade, but knew we had some frozen pith and juice in the freezer, so I wasn't going to pay full price for rather dreary looking lemons. 

Then, on the way out, we paused by the large crates of fruit and vegetables that were sitting outside the shop, piled high. There were some very good lemons, there, but the label '1.70' was attached to the crate. Surely they could not be charging 1.70 euro for a kilogram of lemons..?

As we pondered, I wondered if - at the other extreme - they could be charging 1.70 for the entire crate. Richard popped back into the shop to ask, and it turned out that this was the case. So we said we would have some. We didn't get to keep the crate - instead the lemons were poured into a large, dustbin-sized pink sack:

As soon as we got home, Richard weighed them on our bathroom scales. There were 12kg of lemons in the sack! 

I set to work to make a batch of lemonade using about 15 of the lemons, then decided to spread the rest out on a table, so that they would not get damp and go bad. Here are most of them: 

Yesterday, I chose about forty of the nicest looking ones, washed them well, and then used the potato peeler to remove the pith, freezing it in four little bags. Then I used the juicer attachment of our food processor to squeeze .. .and squeeze... and squeeze. So much juice. There were four more litres of juice which I froze in litre containers. This means that we now have plenty of frozen pith and juice for the summer, when lemons are out of season. 

I also froze two more ice-cube trays of 'lemon cubes', which we use in hot honey and lemon drinks, or when a recipe requires just a tablespoon or two of lemon juice. 

I still had four left over.