if life gives you LEMONS
Over the past 18 years I’ve become accustomed to living with the guilt of not making the best use of the maybe 5000 limes our lime trees produce every season. But honestly, what can a family of two who rarely drink cocktails do with that many limes?
We make lime pickle, lime and tangelo curd, lime marmalade and lime and macadamia biscuits, and any fish or chicken recipe we can find that calls for lime. And I liquidise hundreds of them with the lawnmower. The sound they make as Prada, my ride-on, macerates them can be alarming, but the smell that emanates from the orchard afterwards is as glorious as the magnolia in flower.
But now I have another problem. Lemons. About three years ago our woefully inadequate lemon tree, which had never grown any taller than knee height and never produced a single lemon, got ripped out of the ground by a flood and deposited on the bank of the stream. I ignored it for weeks and then half-heartedly dug a bit of a hole and
shoved it in. This season, it has fruited. We are inundated with scores of lemons as big as baseballs and ‘not making the best use of lemons’ guilt has replaced lime guilt in my repertoire.
So every few days I slide down the bank on my bum to where the lemon tree is, collect them up, and make very unhealthy lemon and butter drizzles to have with oysters. How naughty is that?
Well, the butter part is naughty I admit, but the lemons must surely counteract that with their myriad health benefits.
For example, the American Heart Association reckons citrus fruits may help lower the risk of ischemic stroke in women. A study of data from nearly 70,000 women over 14 years showed that those who ate the most citrus fruits had a 19 per cent lower risk of ischemic stroke than women who consumed the least. I’m not sure what the different figure was between the most and the least, and nor do I know why there were no men in the survey, but I am hopeful that as the butter is trying to take up residence in my arteries, the lemon juice is sluicing it out again.
One Japanese study found that of 101 women (yep, the men are AWOL in this study too) those who walked regularly and consumed lemon every day had lower blood pressure than those who did not. More interesting, I think, is why they studied 101 women rather than just 100. There must be a scientific reason for that.
The risk of developing asthma appears to be lower in people who consume a high amount of vitamin C, although there’s
more study to be done on this. And a review published in Allergy, Asthma &
Clinical Immunology found that vitamin C benefited people with asthma and bronchial hypersensitivity when they had a cold.
Pairing foods that are high in vitamin C with foods that are iron-rich maximises the body’s ability to absorb iron — a good thing since iron deficiency is a common nutritional deficiency. So chug down spinach and chickpeas, for example, dressed with a squeeze of lemon juice.
And then, for those of us who are shallow enough to want a cosmetic fix as well, there are evidently benefits for the complexion. Vitamin C plays a vital role in the formation of collagen and when eaten in its natural form or applied topically, it can help fight skin damage caused by the sun and pollution, reduce wrinkles, and improve overall skin texture. Now, just before you get overexcited and plant a dozen lemon trees, the above results came from a study on mice. I never knew mice had wrinkles. And another study, albeit now 10 years old, found that when rodents that received lemon phenols along with a highfat diet for 12 weeks, they did not gain as much weight as rodents that did not receive the lemon-peel phenols. Sadly I couldn’t find any research that proves the same applies to humans. Bother.
Other useful stuff to know about lemons:
Lemons don’t ripen or improve in quality after being picked, so grab them off the tree (or the ground) as soon as they are ripe. Store them at room temperature away from direct sunlight.
And then do what with them? Consult Auntie Google for recipes for the following:
Lemon zucchini bars
Angel hair pasta with artichokes and lemon
Lemon raspberry muffins Lemon marmalade
Lemon water
Stay away from recipes for lemon and butter drizzle.
So every few days I slide down the bank on my bum to where the lemon tree is, collect them up, and make very unhealthy lemon and butter drizzles to have with oysters. How naughty is that?