When Life Gives You Lemons, Cool. Free Lemons!

We’ve written about our surplus of sour citrus before. And everyone has heard the saying, “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade”. But sometimes life gives more than you can handle and you’re tired of drinking lemonade. Luckily, lemons are an amazing fruit. They have tons of uses like getting rust off of tools, eliminating tough odors, repelling insects. And we can’t forget powering alarm clocks for science fairs across the nation. Their only real downside is that sometimes they taste like an obvious natural defense mechanism. Sure they can bring a recipe up a notch, and they smell fantastic, but nobody goes out of their way to just eat lemons. There are better ways of avoiding scurvy. When you walk into a room and catch a big whiff of lemon your first reaction is probably not making an escape plan. We give them to toddlers for a reason.

Of all the commonly available fruits offered in an average produce section, lemons are the only one that just aren’t good unless you do something to fix them. I guess some people like sour things. Warheads exist for a reason. But I can pretty much guarantee nobody chose lemons to be their hypothetical deserted island food. But sometimes, even when you are stuck on a hypothetical deserted island, life decides that what you need is more lemons. Might as well smell nice and fresh for when rescue arrives.

Don't Take Life's Lemons, Take Ours Instead

There is a house about a block away from us that has kids selling lemonade about once a month. Sometimes they sell cookies but it’s usually the classic lemonade stand. A dime gets you a Dixie cup of nice, lukewarm, lemony goodness. I usually get a cup whenever I pass by. It’s always good to support local businesses. But this past week our girls decided they wanted a lemonade stand. Kinda. It just so happens we have a big lemon tree in our back yard that sprouts lemons like its trying to prove something. But instead of the store bought oblong yellow lumps of sour, ours grows Meyer lemons. They are sweeter and just begging to be made into lemonade. Bright golden yellow sweet citrusy goodness.

If we’re gonna have a free market then I’m all for competition. But the kids up the street already have a head start with community recognition as well as a killer location. So we needed to innovate and think of a way to carve out our own niche in the local lemon market. And what we came up with was…lemons! Yup. We have a tree that gives us more lemons than necessary and we’ve already made enough frozen concentrate to get us through the summer. Plus, not everyone is thirsty for lemonade, but they may be needing to add some zest to dinner. Or they need to power an alarm clock. So, the girls (Dani and I) made a lemon stand.

When Life Gives You Lemons, Make A Lemon Stand

The girls were uncontainable balls of excitement at the prospect of having and operating a lemon stand. Saoirse helped me wash all of them so they would be nice and clean to give to people. Tova helped Dani make a sign and put the golden citrus in little paper bags to be sold at four for one dollar. They didn’t care about making money. I don’t think they even knew that was a key part of the operation. They were more excited just to have the stand and to give the lemons to people. So excited that we had to constantly remind them how to interact with other humans. Instead they usually opted for frantically jumping around and screaming, “Want to buy some lemons! Four for a dollar!” at every passerby regardless of proximity. To be honest, I did enjoy the shocked surprise and mildly confused reaction most people had when faced with the hyper active sales pitch in the form of nearly indecipherable screams offering lemons from almost a block away.

It was windy, as it always seems to be in the evenings here, and a little chilly, but the girls didn’t mind. We stayed out on the lawn for a few hours helping the girls sell lemons. Sometimes to people who probably didn’t actually need lemons. Their attention span usually equal to that of a cocker spaniel came and went. The girls would run around and dance in between yelling their sales pitch. They would sit under the table with their little doctor kit and offer aid to injured lemons. Or they would ride their bikes and forget about their lemon stand altogether. At least until they saw a car in the distance and would scream, “Customer! A Customer is coming!”

It's Not About The Destination

In the end they sold about 20 bags. There were also some friendly neighbors that didn’t need lemons but gave them a dollar or two anyway. One woman that drove up gave the girls a $25 gift card to IHOP. Incredibly random but also a chance to meet a wonderfully nice woman from somewhere in the neighborhood. The girls didn’t care about the money. We’re fortunate to have kids not driven by desire or the accumulation of stuff. It’s important to us that the girls understand the value of what they have and where it comes from. We try to instill an understanding of the greater cost of things, not just financially, but the human and environmental cost. They are young and haven’t begun to really grasp the concept of money. For them, the best part of the day was showing off their silly dance moves and giving people bags of lemons.

For that I couldn’t be happier.

There may not always be a silver lining. Sometimes life is just hard. When life gives you lemons, well, jokes on life I guess cause lemons are really useful.

Our Best Meyer Lemonade Recipe

You may think that making good lemonade just involves mixing lemon juice, water, and sugar. This is a mistake. If you do it that way the sugar will just sink to the bottom and you’ll end up adding more than you need. Also, side note, Lemonade should never come in powder form. This is an abomination and is as much lemonade as Koolaid is juice.

The real clutch player and total game changer is simple syrup. If you want lemonade that tastes like it should cost too much per bottle this is the way to go. If you have a lot of lemons that need to be juiced you can take the lemon juice concentrate and freeze it to make refreshing drinks all summer.

Prep: 20 minutes

Cook: 5 minutes

Additional: 5 minutes

Total Time: 30 minutes

Ingredients

1 cup Meyer lemon juice (about 16 lemons)

1 cup simple syrup (1 cup white granulated sugar and 1 cup water)

2-3 cups of cold water

1-2 mint or lavender sprigs (optional)

Servings 4

Directions

1. Making the simple syrup

In a medium saucepan combine the sugar and water. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly, until all sugar has dissolved. Allow to cool.

2. Juicing the lemons

You can do this while the simple syrup is cooling. Squeeze 1 cup of fresh lemon juice. Meyer lemons tend to be on the smaller side so this could take anywhere from 12 to 16 lemons.

3. Combine

Combine the lemon juice and the simple syrup in a pitcher. Next add 2 to 3 cups of cold water and taste. Add more water if you want a more diluted lemonade. Remember, adding ice will also dilute the drink.

(Optional) you can add a couple sprigs of mint or lavender to give it a summery note.

4. Chill bruh

Refrigerate for 30 minutes to 1 hour then serve with ice.