A few days ago, I received a text from Em…

Now, my darling girl’s wish is my command, so I set about researching the process of preserving lemons. The fermenting book to which she referred in her text contains surprisingly little about lemons, so I consulted Dr. Internet and watched a dozen videos …and eventually consulted Annie, who consulted her chef friend, who relayed instructions.

All of this resulted in my learning that the process of preserving lemons is remarkably simple:

Cut lemons

Salt lemons

Squish lemons in jar

Pour more lemon juice over lemons so they’re covered

Leave lemons for a month

So that’s what I did. A few of my sources sliced or quartered the lemons, but most left them whole but cut to a half-inch from the bottom of the lemon. Some sources offered a measurement for the salt, but most just used A LOT and specified that the salt must be kosher or sea salt–the salt cannot contain iodine. I used the Maldon Sea Salt Flakes I ordered from Amazon a little while ago:

James bought me twenty lemons because I asked for ten (and, frankly, the man’s a bit of an overachiever in the relationship realm). I cut and salted thirteen….

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I then stuffed them into a 1.9 litre mason jar I sterilized earlier and packed them down with my sauerkraut pounder….

I juiced the other seven lemons into the jar to ensure the lemons were covered with juice….

And that’s basically it! Seal the jar, label it and be sure to include the date.

Check on your lemons after a few days to ensure that the juice covers the lemons. If not, add more juice, seal it back up and leave it.

I will report back on the state of my preserved lemons on April 11th!!

We have a full roster of guests arriving over the next few weeks–James’ nephew tomorrow, Annie and Johnny the week after that, Francie and Chazz shortly thereafter, and Em and three friends in May–and that’s all before the summer when we usually have most of our guests. Looks like we’ll be cooking up a storm over the next little while.

I’ve also started an online plant-based cooking course through Rouxbe (pronounced “Ruby”), which I’m enjoying tremendously. I’m currently learning knife skills…at which I need MUCH practice.

And the song of the day is Josh Ritter’s “Henrietta, Indiana” because it is always the first song that plays when I say, “Hey Google, play Josh Ritter radio!”