Lemony Pick It

This has been a phenomenal meyer lemon season for the Pick It Tree.  Not only has it allowed me to filled many hands with pounds and pounds of lemons, the lemon skins have been delicate and the meat has been sweet and juicy.  It’s already the end of April and there are about a hundred left.

I don’t expect a long break between this and the late summer season, but just in case, I’ve decided to preserve some.

I adapted Simply Recipes’s basic method:

Preserved Meyer Lemons

Ingredients

8-10 Meyer lemons, scrubbed very clean
1/2 cup kosher salt, more if needed

Extra fresh squeezed lemon juice, if needed

Optional:  You can add spices to the lemons for preserving - cloves, coriander seeds, peppercorns, cinnamon stick, bay leaf.  (I used cardamon and bay leaves)

Optional: Olive oil to top off at the end

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***UPDATE*** Yesterday, April 11, 2010, Forage released an open letter informing the public that they would no longer be able to incorporate the locally-foraged goods into their menu items. 

Earlier this month, two field inspectors from the county public health department visited the restaurant. They received an anonymous complaint and came to advise us to stop accepting home-grown produce for inclusion in our dishes… . All foods prepared and sold for public consumption in restaurants must come from certified sources. This position excludes home growers. If we don’t comply with the county, we jeopardize our Food Facility Rating, which is currently an A.  

I understand that the American public expects, and therefore the government must enforce, the highest levels of food safety possible, but I’m sorry to see this practice end.  It was a wonderful concept to have an accomplished chef turn people’s backyard produce into culinary delights.  Further, it was exciting for those of us with gems in our gardens and yards to share our bounties. 

Forage will continue to hold its Sunday Harvest Call, but rather than use the produce it collects, it will donate them to food pantries that feed the hungry.  Way to turn this bad news into good!  (I resent and abstain from the lemon —> lemonade analogy, obviously!)

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A friend and restaurant entreprenuer who has been well-aware of my love for sharing the Pick It Tree’s amazing lemons recently introduced me to Forage, a new restaurant in the Silverlake neighborbood of Los Angeles.  Forage prepares meals from locally harvested produce brought to them by the public.  

Every Sunday, Forage holds a “harvest call” where you can bring your produce for the chefs to sample.  If they like your produce, they will take them off your hands.  One Sunday, this past March, I decided to bring a sample of my meyer lemons to the Harvest Call. 

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All this rain and sunshine has made the Pick It tree pregnant with big, round juicy lemons.  This morning I discovered that she’d produced Siamese twins!

Or is it just a lemon with an apple bottom booty?