When life hands you lemons what do you do? What if a tree hands you lemons…lots and lots of lemons!
Saving money and conserving resources is important to me. My guess is that it probably is to you as well. I have a lemon tree that gives us 
lots of lemons oodles and oodles of lemons. They are all ripe at once and no one can use all those lemons at once! In case you are wondering that is a pile of 229 lemons. I set out to put my pile of lemons to good use. I could not stand buying lemons mid summer for lemon bars, lemon loaf, or lemon brownies. It was an equally agonizing experience to purchase lemons for chicken picatta, Greek Lemon chicken soup and the like. Oh and don’t get me started on powdered lemonade drinks after watching lemons rot away on my tree in February!
Instead I gathered my 229 lemons (also 5 oranges and 4 limes).
I washed my heaping pile of lemons after removing the stems and leaves.
At this point the house already smelled amazing and we were just getting started. Yes I had lots of help from my four year old helper. 
After washing all of that beautiful fruit I zested each lemon. There is no need to get obsessive when there are this many lemons, so zest quickly and make sure not to grate into the pith (the white part). You just want the fresh bright lemony yellow top part of the peel. As I did this I set aside the petite and perfect lemons. The ones that were sunny yellow with unblemished surfaces. I selected the ones that seemed to be too pretty to drag along a grater or chop to pieces. These were set aside for slicing into perfect pretty lemon rounds.
Next each of the zested lemons were cut in half and juiced, using a standard electric juicer.
The juice was collected in a large pitcher and poured through a strainer into another pitcher to remove the accumulated pulp.
After an hour or so of zesting, juicing, straining, and slicing I had this.
So now what!? Well most of it would need to be frozen so it could be put to good use over the upcoming year.
The sliced rounds were bagged up for use in water, the edges of glasses, cooking, and ice cubes.
The zest was divided into 2 tablespoon batches in snack size Ziploc bags for freezing. It will be used later for jams, cooking, and baking.
Now what to do with all that juice. these 229 lemons yielded a couple gallons of juice! We go through a lot of lemonade here during the summer so I made 3 batches of lemonade syrup (recipe below). After that I decided to store the remainder of the juice in 1 cup increments in quart size freezer Ziploc bags. This is handy I have found because it preserves the flexibility of the lemon juice. It can be used for cooking or baking but could still be thawed and used to make more lemonade syrup if we run out. We usually do about half way through Summer.
In this picture you see that I also juiced and zested the handful of oranges and limes I had harvested. There was no need to store these small quantities and it was all put to good use I promise. You will also note that nothing here had much effort invested in making it pretty or cute. The purpose here is to quickly process and effectively store the raw material. Waste not want not, and all that good stuff. I find that simple Ziploc bags save a lot of space in the freezer. There is time for making it cute and pretty later when all that lemony goodness gets put to good use!
Like when you make….
Lemonade Syrup
Lemon and slice lemon isolated on white
10 minutes preparation plus time to cool
You will need:
3 cups of Sugar
1 cup of water
3 cups of strained fresh lemon juice
1. Bring 3 cups of sugar and one cup of water to a rolling boil over high heat, in a large pot
2. Stir and allow the mixture to boil for about 3 minutes.
3. Remove the mixture from the heat allow to cool for approximately 5 minutes
4. Add the lemon juice and stir
5. Allow to cool
Lemonade syrup can be stored in the freezer for a year or in the refrigerator for about 3 weeks in a sealed container.
To use the syrup you mix 1 cup of the syrup with 3-4 cups of water. Tastes vary so add water slowly at first and give it a taste! It can be thinned to the point of serving a refreshing lemon water or it can be served as an intense lemonade. It is up to you with this flexible recipe. We have even used it to make hard lemonade by substituting vodka for part of the recommended water.
Lemonade syrup is bright and cheery. In a pretty bottle with a bow or in rustic mason jars with a cute label it makes a wonderful hostess gift, a gift for neighbors, and my personal favorite an end of the year welcome summer gift for the kid’s teacher. Afterall, not much says welcome summer better than fresh homemade lemonade! It’s just too bad those lemons all turn ripe in February here!
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More Recipes:
Shannon
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