Good Morning Lemon

In the oven right now is a loaf of Lemon Struesel Bread. Oh my gosh, it smells so good. Anything with struesel topping is irresistable. I bought a bunch of Meyer lemons and spent some quality time with them the other day. First I de-zestify them. Meyer lemons have a golden-orange-yellow zest, like a summer sunset. I like to put it in the convection oven and dehydrate it for storage. You can also put it in the freezer, or combine it with sugar and freeze it if you think you'll use it primarily for future baking. I use it quite a bit on meat & fish.

After the lemons have lost their yellow skins I juice them. I probably had a few dozen lemons - they are small. The problem with putting them into the juicer at this stage is that they still have the white pith on them and it's quite bitter, of course. When you put pith in your juicer it will be juiced. So I do it by hand with a pretty, yellow, citrus reamer. Did you know that pith is vascular? It stores & carries nutrients. So it's probably better to eat it for nutrition. But it tastes really bad, like chewing vitamins.

My bag o' lemons gave forth about 3 cups of lovely juice. I used some to make a very time-consuming lemon meringue pie and put the rest in the fridge. This morning it went into the sturesel bread. I am thinking of making the rest into lemonaid or maybe a few lemon drop martinis.
Meyer Lemons are sweeter and less acidic than regular lemons. They are in season in February/March and are always worth the time & money.