Lots n lots n lots o' LEMONS!

This past weekend was absolutely FULL of cooking and baking. I received a huge bucket of Bush Lemons (about 50 lemons in total!) and about 12 limes from Freecycle (it's a bit like ebay, but where everything is free). You can see the huge pile of them below in the picture (on the way to get the lemons I did get sidetracked a little and visited a garage sale and an op shop and picked up the books, kitchen gadgets and patterns all for $3 BARGAIN!)















So when I got home with my bounty I had a thousand things I wanted to make with it all.

So far I have made:

• lemonade (of course!)
• lemon curd (for on toast and in tart fillings - that's to come)
• lemon and lime cordial
• lemon cake, where you pour a lemon syrup over the cooked cake, makes it sooo moist! Here's the recipe
• Lemon and basil risotto YUM!
• Fixed my previous attempt at orange and grapefruit jam, by adding the pectin from soaked lemon seeds, lime juice and rind, passionfruit and apple. Now it tastes much better and isn't overpowered by the grapefruit taste.

But I still have about 15 lemons and 10 limes left.  So I'm thinking about a lemon and lime marmalade (MORE JAM!), maybe a sorbet, and then probably just freezing the rest of the juice for use in future cordials and lemonade.


So I have been a little carried away this past weekend, but don't worry I haven't forgotten about my pledge I made for the new financial year.

So just to update on where I'm at with those pledges

• Not to buy any new clothes - so far so good, I haven't even tempted myself by going to any shopping centres. Actually come to think of it, I haven't gone to any shopping centres, except for grocery shopping once a fortnight, for months!
• Master baking bread and making my own bread starter - ok this one I haven't even looked at yet, BUT I have started growing my own ginger beer plant! It's so simple. I'm following the instructions on Rhonda's down to earth blog.
• To keep my plants alive and make my own fertiliser and pesticide - plants are still alive and I just saw that the cherry tomato tree I bought a few weeks ago has it's first little tomatoes appearing! So exciting! I did a little dance on my balcony when I saw them (3 in total!! tomatoes that is not dances). Must be that worm wee fertiliser I'm using on them. I have also almost made my homemade white oil with oil, detergent and water (I say almost because the oil is in the sparayer and that's as far as I've gone!)
• Make my own dishcloths - haven't started this yet, but our current store-bought dishcloth is looking pretty manky at the moment so it is spurring me on to get started on making them, hopefully by next week!
• Make my own liquid dishwashing detergent - nope haven't even looked at this one yet
• Stick to my new budget - well I'm happy to report that this fortnight is almost oer and I have stuck to my new budget to the letter (or number I guess!). It's great to see the balance in the savings account going up and up and up!

Well that was my weekend roundup. What did you get up to? I'd love to hear if you got up to anything new relating to living simply or learning new skills.

Have a great day!

x
Kim