Trying New Things
Sometimes it can be hard to try new things. There are a million excuses not to. Time, there is never any extra time. Money, who has money to throw out if it all goes awry? Where will it go? Do I even have those materials? No. Nothing new for us today. It’s so easy to avoid trying new things and nobody notices if you don’t. So, it’s not always something I make a point in doing, but lifestyle changes necessitate, no, demand one tries new things.
While we say we are moving into full time farm life, we have opened ourselves up logistically to try new things and keep that promise. We have begun canning and dehydrating foods from our garden, cooking veggies that are easily grown, roasting cuts of meat we have never cooked with before and trying to get inventive with using what we have. It’s actually fun sometimes, and other times it feels like a big waste of time. Our latest ‘try’; fermenting lemons we were gifted from a friend. This one we’ve wanted to try for years and always missed the opportunity for fresh lemons from friends outside of Lassen who can actually grow them. Well, we’ve finally gotten a chance and we are holding our breath now while we wait to see the outcome, it takes about a month, so we only hold our breath figuratively. So, how did we do it?
Here’s the gist. First you give the lemons a good scrubbing, in just hot water. You want to pick good lemons with a life left, not just the old ones you need to juice before they go bad. After cleaning about 10, we took the stems off and cut them into quarters and measured about 5 teaspoons of salt.
I used a Celtic Sea Salt that we just really enjoy the flavor of but any sea salt should be just fine (I don’t think table salt works for fermenting).
We moved the lemons to a glass bowl and sprinkled salt as we layered. Taking a clean quart size jar, we filled it with a layer of lemons and then used a sauerkraut pounder to express some juice and pack in the lemons tightly. We repeated until the jar was full. Adding the last bit of salt and scraping the glass bowl to make sure all of the salt was incorporated, we pounded one last time.
The recipe we followed said to juice a few extra lemons for juice in case you need to top it off, we didn’t, but I used a glass fermentation weight to ensure the lemons were fully submerged. When we were finished we screwed the lid on tightly and moved it to the pantry room to stay cool. The recipe says to turn it every 12 hours to ensure the lemons are all wet with the juice and salt to inhibit any mold growth. We wait now for a few days and then we will put them into cold storage and wait for about a month until they are fermented through. I also added a glass fermenting weight to the top of the jar to make sure the lemons stayed submerged.
I love lemons, love the juice and the tart flavor and really everything except the way my teeth feel after eating them. So, await our report. We will see how they come out and whether you can actually just eat them, peel and all like we’ve heard, or if they really add the flavor we need to any recipe. We will have to report back with the details as soon as we can.
What new thing have you tried lately? Are you ever afraid to try something new? Does it come natural to you to jump in and try new things without hesitation?
Okay, this is an update after months of waiting for the lemons to ferment and then they sat in the cold storage and eventually the refrigerator. I finally got to try the lemons!! Verdict?
Well, to be honest, not a huge fan… The bitterness has not completely gone, although the sourness is definitely down and its a bit less hard to bite through. I’m sadly NOT impressed and thinking maybe I did something wrong. I really had my hopes up, so really, maybe I did it wrong. Might still be good to cook with, like was recommended in the original recipe, but I did have high hopes for something good all on its own. One more bummer in the trying new things department. haha
