Lemons and Strawberries

When I saw strawberries and lemons on sale at the store today I just couldn’t help myself.

I made strawberry lemonade.  I know it looks a bit revolting but the mashed strawberries are so good with the lemon juice.

A note about the lemons.  The strawberries were what I went for in the first place but while at the store I saw Meyer lemons and they were even on sale (yes, I am a bargain shopper).  Over the last couple of years I’ve heard a lot about Meyer lemons and how awesome, spectacular, stupendous, and life-changing they were.  I’d never seen them in the stores I frequent (Read: regular old grocery stores. I’m sure my beloved Berkeley Bowl had them but I didn’t know about them during the years I shopped there) so even though I’d wanted to try them I hadn’t been able to even get my hands on any.  So of course when I saw them in the store I had to give these much talked about little gems a try.

I brought them home with plans to make some strawberry lemonade and some Italian Ice (lemon sorbet).  While cutting and juicing them they smelled lemony and they were nice and juicy.  I wanted to do a comparison so I pulled out a regular lemon I had on hand to see if I could taste a difference.

Isn’t the juice a pretty shade of yellow?

Here’s my take: They’re not all that.

The Meyer juice was more opaque than regular lemon juice (as you can see from the above photo) and there was a slightly different flavor.  Did they change my life?  Nope.  Honestly I wasn’t really impressed.  In fact, I found I prefer the flavor of plain old regular lemons.  I don’t plan on buying Meyer’s again and think, from my limited experience, they’re way too hyped up.  Maybe all seven Meyers I bought were bad ones (you’d have a hard time convincing me of that, though).  Maybe it’s just me.

I’m more of a grapefruit kind of girl anyway.

I still made the lemon sorbet, though, and it’s fine.  Both my grapefruit and orange ginger sorbets were way better.  Just sayin’.  Sorry, no pics of any of them.

Moving on.

With my newly acquired strawberries I had to buy an angel food cake.  I did consider making one (never have before) but realized I didn’t have the right pan for it and would need to find a recipe anyway.  No biggie; less work for me.  So we had angel food cake with freshly whipped cream and fresh strawberries for dessert tonight.  It felt like such a spring-y treat!  Just the thing I needed after getting some snow over the weekend.

I tried a new curry recipe for dinner.  It was rather forgettable but I got a lot of entertainment while watching Wingnut try to feed himself rice.  He also gobbled up a ton of strawberries.  I fully anticipate a barfing/diarrhea session from him sometime tonight after seeing how much fruit that boy put down.  At least he enjoyed himself and provided Peanut and me with some great entertainment.  Ah, motherhood.

Now I’m looking forward to breakfast tomorrow morning when I can start my day off right with another big serving of strawberries and angel food cake.