Lemonade

Growing up we learn certain truths. Grass is green. Elephants are big. Sweet things are bad for you. And lemons are sour. We learn from a young age that lemons are condiment foods. We squeeze them onto fish and chips. We put lemon slices into jugs of water to make it less boring. And occassionaly we mix lemon juice with oodles of sugar and carbonated water to make lemonde (and more often we buy lemonade ready made, with no actual trace of real lemon...). And we learn that lemonade, no matter how delicious, belongs to the category of fizzy drinks. Therefore it is a sometimes food. Therefore it belongs in the category of all other junk foods: it’s tasty, but you can’t have it every day because it is bad for you. Sadness. And so goes the vicious cycle of human beings being addicted to sweet because it is rare in nature.

So imagine my surprise two weeks ago reading the Alfalfa House newsletter that there exists a fruit called a “lemonade,” and it is a sweet lemon. And imagine my delight, when visiting the Farmer’s Markets at Eveleigh last week, that it was readily available! According to Daley’s Fruit Tree Nursery, a lemonade is a cross between a true lemon and a Meyer lemon (apparently the most popular kind of lemon because it is a cross between an orange and a lemon and is not highly acidic). So I bought 2 lemonades, and let them sit in the fruit bowl for a few days. And then one chilly afternoon at work I cut open a lemonade and tentatively tasted the flesh. Oh sweet heavenly goodness. It was all true. A sweet lemon! It’s so sweet you can eat it like an orange, and I’m sure when I’m sick of eating it straight, I’ll take up my friend Carmel’s advice to try it in a sorbet... Mmm... lemonade sorbet... 

As grown ups, we learn that the truths we learnt as children are not always so true. Grass is more likely to be brown. Elephants are big (some things in nature we cannot change). Lemons can be deliciously sweet, and lemonade can be an everyday food... bring on the vitamin C boosting over the next few months whilst this new found joy is in season! (On a side note, whilst researching this post, I discovered there is a fruit called chocolate pudding... I think a visit to Tropical Fruit World around August/September is in order!)