Thursday 3 August 2017

It's Citrus Season

At this time of the year, citrus fruit is in abundance and it's cheap. Here are some ideas to make the most of these fruits and to continue the money savings all year round.

* Eating oranges / mandarins it in the usual way for snacks.

* Cutting up oranges and freezing them for icy cold Summer snacks.

* Making 50 / 50 cordial. To have this yummy cordial all year round, zest and squeeze 3 oranges and 3 lemons per batch of cordial. Place the contents into a container or zip lock bag and freeze.

* Blitz a whole orange in a food processor to make whole orange cake. Blitz a few extra oranges, portion and freeze to make this yummy cake whenever you feel like a baking treat.

* Zest and juice lemons for lemon slice. Zest can be frozen in a container for up to a year. Alternatively freeze the zest in ice cube trays.

* Juice the lemons and freeze into ice cubes Then pop them out into containers for future baking / cooking.

* Use lemon juice to make lemon butter.  This is so yummy on toast and in tarts.  It's very quick and easy to make in the microwave and keeps for up to three weeks in the fridge.

Lemon chicken is quick and easy to make using lemon slices,  juice and seasonings.

*  Use the juice of a couple of lemons in jam making.

Other uses for lemon juice are -  lemon and pistachio biscuits, on pancakes, in  chicken flan, on fish and salmon patties or as a dressing on salads.

It's great to have these items on hand in the freezer. It stops the need to run to the supermarket for one lemon. I'll bet it would be out of season and you'd be paying premium prices.

If you haven't thought about it before, growing a lemon tree is great. It looks good, the blossoms and fruit smell divine and a bowl of lemons on the kitchen bench is a little ray of sunshine in the middle of Winter. It can be grown in a pot too. Best of all, you'll get your money back from the cost of a tree in no time.

So if anyone offers you a bag of lemons / oranges, or your neighbour has a tree with too much fruit for them to use, you'll know what to do with it.


Freshly picked lemons

Our tree

Lemon butter

Lemon slice

Whole orange cake

50 / 50 cordial

Lemon chicken
If you click on the purple writing it will  take you to the recipe on my blog.

How do you make the most of citrus fruit ? 

5 comments:

  1. Yum Wendy! I love an abundance of citrus. It just makes me feel wealthy :) Mimi xxx

    ReplyDelete
  2. A little while ago, I was given a big bag of mixed citrus by a lovely friend and made so many things with them. I made a lemon crumble slice and lemon butter. I juiced the limes and put that in the freezer and I made orange and yoghurt cake too. So much goodness! Meg:)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Citrus is something I cannot grow where I live. How nice that you have such an abundance. Right now, in Oregon, USA, we are in peach season and I've been enjoying greezingvthem and making jam

    ReplyDelete
  4. Lemon juice mixed with icing sugar makes lovely banana cake frosting. Frozen sections of lemons placed in a water bottle is very refreshing in summer. Lemon butter between layers of banana cake is delicious and a decadent treat.

    ReplyDelete

This blog is designed to be a source of encouragement and inspiration.

Negative comments will not be published. Comments advertising businesses or goods for sale will not be published.

Please include your first name in your comment so that I can respond to you.

Comments are moderated manually. Please allow a few hours for them to appear.