When you start thinking about lemons, what do you really think about? There are Sorbet-filled lemons, we have Pound Cakes made from lemons, and there are a number of recipes about things like marmalade, lemonade, and lemon-flavored products.

Coming from the citrus background of my youth, I usually go to a store to buy lemons that are well colored with smooth skins and are free of soft spots and bruises. In my judgment, a good lemon should have a firm feel and be of a comparative heavy weight.

The place to store lemons is in the refrigerator. Just by keeping them cooler as compared to room temperature, they should last 2 to 3 weeks longer.

In recipes, you can plan that an average-sized lemon will yield about 3 tablespoons of juice. A large lemon will yield ¼ cup. In other words, it takes about six medium lemons or four large-sized lemons to make 1 cup of lemon juice.

When you have a lot of lemons, plan on freezing the juice and peel (the zest) separately.  If you are using both the peel and juice of a lemon, remove the peel first.  You should wrap each separately in heavy plastic freezer food bags.  Stored that way should result in the juice lasting up to 3 months and the frozen peel lasting 4 to 5 months.

The nutrition elements related to a medium sized lemon is 17 calories, negligible fat, very little sodium, and no measurable cholesterol.  Lemons are high in vitamin C – 31 milligrams.  This means that it has a lot of nutritional punch and can help reduce the fat and salt of your diet.

Use lemons to perk up appetizers, drinks, fruits, seafood, soups, and a lot of other foods.

Growers in the United States currently produce well over 85 percent of all lemons, mainly of the Eureka and Lisbon variety.  The fruit most popularly grown in backyards are of the Meyer variety.  It tends to taste like a cross between a lemon and an orange, and as such is sweeter and with a less biting flavor than the commercial types.  The Meyer variety tends to be rounder and very juicy with orange-yellow flesh, almost seedless, and with a thinner skin.

On the other side, Meyers are more fragile, delicate, perishable, and they don’t travel as well as the supermarket varieties.  Meyer lemons also should never be picked green or they will not develop their full, rich flavor.