When Life Gives you Lemons...

One of the funniest things to witness is seeing a person or even a little kid trying a lemon for the first time. Not only is it hilarious for the ones watching them, but it's also entertaining to see your own reaction as well. Did you know that lemons have about 6% of critic acid within it; that's how they get their sour taste is from the acid? The food that you taste with a tad of sweetness and some sourness most likely has a pinch of lemon mixed in with it.

            Throughout the years, many cultures have shared their experiences of making foods with other cultures so therefore different traditions are used all over the world today. Lemons are the perfect example of how they have changed throughout the decades. This bitter, sweet fruit is used in so many dishes that you can’t even imagine.

            For starters, have you noticed how at restaurants that mostly every beverage (from a water, to an iced tea, a Bloody Mary, a lemonade, or even sometimes a pop) you have the option to receive it with a lemon on the rim? I personally love being able to squeeze a lemon slice in my drink to get that sweetness taste. But, I do have to say though that some of the down sides of squeezing a lemon in our drinks would be how the seeds go everywhere within the glass particularly getting sucked up into your straw, too many lemons clutched in the drink causes it to become too sour, and mostly if you have the lemon at the right angle, you may get a little taste of it right in the eye. Bullseye.

            Imagine this: You’re sitting down at a restaurant and all of a sudden you see your waiter coming with your table’s food. You go from being bored to fully thrilled because you are now seconds away from eating the food that you have been dying to eat ever sense you order. Once you get your plate with your fancy food, you notice some side things that make it even fancier including lemon slices. Apparently more restaurants are adding lemons, cucumbers, and other side dishes to plates to make the customers think that it’s a whole new and better meal just by having the fancier sides. A lot of customers now a-days like to add the juice of a lemon to a steak, a taco, or even a salad. Today, you would be surprised how many dishes at a restaurant are served with lemons on the side. Lemon juice is now in style!

            Sometimes it’s easy to tell when a desert has lemons in it (hint, hint my grandma’s famous Easy LEMON Bars), but sometimes you can’t even notice that there is lemon juice within the deserts. Sometimes bakers including my mom will put a pinch lemon juice while mixing all the ingredients to sugar cookies. Bakers do this kind of thing to give the batter a delicious taste that everyone will love!

            Just to recap, lemons are one of the most common foods used today to help make other foods even better. From having floating seeds in your drinks, to fancy dishes, to having a sweet taste in deserts, lemons are used in everyday meals and make things have a whole new taste.

            The perfect recipe for my column "Recipe of the Week" is the one and only Easy Lemon Bars made by my own loving grandmother. (What am I kidding, I love all my grandma’s homemade goods). What a great way to have my first shared recipe be created by the one that this café is named after (also known as my middle name)!