Lemons, Limes, Oranges - Oh My! - Citrus From Our Trees
One thing that we have in our neighborhood in Volcan, Panama is citrus. Lots and lots of lemons, limes and oranges. Free for the taking, watered by rain! What could be better?
I recently picked these lemons and limes from our trees as I was mowing the lawn. I wasn't even able to reach or carry all of the ones I could find. One tree still had a lot of limes on them, but I knew I already had more than enough! I'm going to have to start creating recipes to use these in other than making lemonade every day!
A lemon tree with a handful of tasty lemons!
We take the lemons that we find and squeeze them into a bowl with our handy lemon squeezer. This thing is heavy and industrial strength. It does a great job! I then will run the juice through a strainer as I measure it in a large measuring cup.
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This last time I was able to get about 3 cups from about 15 lemons and limes that we found. That's a lot of juice! After I strain it, I will pour it into a one cup bowl and put it in the freezer. Then I'll let it freeze and pop it out to go into a Ziploc for freezer storage until I need it later. I add the one cup of juice to 3/4 cup or so of sugar and a gallon of water. It makes a tasty lemonade!! I currently have 7 frozen cups of juice in my freezer as well as citrus on the trees and a BIG bag in my fridge waiting to be juiced!
Above you can see some of the citrus fruits cup up that we found in the trees the other day. There is a grapefruit (that usually get thrown out because of worms), super sour orange, green seedless lime, yellow lemon, navel orange (very unripe), a few not super sour oranges (but not sweet really), and a lime with seeds. There is also usually a fruit that looks like a lime on the outside but it orange (and sour) on the inside and Mandarin oranges as well (but they are so high, I can rarely pick them - and they have lots of seeds and little fruit).
We have a ton of peels left over after we juice all this fruit. I used to throw it in the yard and run over it with the mower every other week until I read this post from @buckaroo where she mentioned in the comments using the peels to make a cleaning solution, so I tried that this time. I stuffed a bunch of peels in a jar and then filled it with vinegar and left it to sit for a few weeks. I look forward to seeing how it turns out!
What would you do with A LOT of lemons and limes?
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I didn't know that about the peels, very interesting. You have quite the selection of citrus for sure and at the best price.
Yes, definitely the best price!! We don't ever even have to water them! It's great!
All right, where did she go? And what did you do with her? Something fishy going on here.
Ha ha! I commented on the wrong account first and had to delete it and repost. ;) This account I post to various fb pages and I like to keep them separate. :)
I thought someone might have hijacked your post, or kidnapped you and holding you for ransom. Ha ha. how wrong I was, you were just playing the hiding came.
Lemons, lemons everywhere When my wife and I were looking from a new house we focused on one of the suburbs we liked every single house we looked at had a lemon tree except one and it had a lemon tree hanging over its fence from the next door neighbors house.
The house we settled on had both a lime and a lemon pitty that we are not moving in there for at least two years I know I could do with some homemade lemonade this summer
Nice! That sounds like a great place! We really love getting lemonade. Yum!!
Great post @corazondelcielo. Thanks for the mention. Please let me know how your cleaning solution turns out. Your squeezy machine is fantastic! Wish we could get them here. Have you squeezed pomegranate juice with that?
I am looking forward to getting the cleaning solution going soon! Yes, the squeezer is great! We had this junky one we brought with us that started falling apart with the amount of citrus we were squeezing, so we knew we had to get a bigger one! I haven't ever even seen pomegranates here! Need to keep an eye out as that's a great idea!!
Actually the only time I've seen that squeezer used is for pomegranate juice. I hope you find them. We have a couple trees on our homestead so are blessed with delicious pomegranates (but no squeezer)
I love pomegranate seeds! Tasty but they are kind of difficult to open! Going to have to look for one around here!
You're so lucky that you have so many variety of citrus fruits available! That juice will taste amazing, I'm sure :)
Yes, it's amazing to have that much variety of citrus readily available to us and it does make some amazing lemonade. :)
I love lemons and limes....think of the nice cream and popsicles you could make, YUM! I wish I had citrus trees available..... Your industrial juicer looks like quite a beast, just what you need for the quantity you process. Love it!
Yes, it makes some delicious lemonade. I hadn't thought of popsicles! I bet my kids would love that. Yes, we really appreciate the big juicer - we used to have a small wimpy one that didn't last long with the amount we were juicing.
FOR TSE:
Lemon juice is great for detoxing your liver. Health nuts say to drink the juice of a lemon in one cup of warm water every day before breakfast. (Notice I say "health nuts" say this. Maybe someday I should try it. For now, I just drink it in iced tea.)
As for limes -- margaritas, key lime pie, all kinds of Caribbean chicken, fajitas, lime sorbet, cherry limeade. Limes are hands down my favorite citrus. Can't get enough of 'em.
Ah, I won't tell my husband about the cleansing then as he always likes to try new things suggested by health nuts. ;) Ha. I am currently only using the juice for lemonade, but I need to figure out something else I could do with it. Well, that and the cleaning solution! Good ideas for the limes. I like to have some lime juice in a Dr Pepper when I drink one (I found some at a local grocery store today and bought a few - one a month - they never have DrP here)!
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