My Abundant Life: Making The Most Of Citrus Fruit.

When most people think of Winter they think of colds, the flu and putting the heater on. I love Winter for the cold weather, comfort food and most importantly, citrus fruit. At this time of the year citrus fruit is in abundance and it's cheap. My girls love oranges as a Winter snack. They cut them up into eighths and eat every last drop of pulp. Much better for you than store bought orange juice and cheaper per portion size.

I love to make 50 / 50 cordial for the family . It's made with 3 oranges and 3 lemons. So to have the cheap Winter fruit available for cordial in Summer, I zest and squeeze the oranges and lemons into a container and freeze. I also make a whole orange cake that uses one orange. I just blend the whole orange ( minus the pips ) in the food processor and freeze it in a container for all year round baking.

Lemons are coming into season too. With supermarkets selling them at 80 cents each, I'm very grateful that my lemon tree is in it's sixth season of bearing a good amount of fruit. To make the most of the "free" lemons, I zest them and freeze the zest for lemon slice, lemon and pistachio biscuits, lemon chicken and savoury chicken or salmon flan. Then I juice them and pour the juice into ice cube trays and freeze. The ice blocks are stored in an airtight container to be used on fish , pancakes, to make lemon butter, jam. lemon slice etc, etc. This year I'm planning on slicing some lemons and freezing the slices to make lemon chicken.

It's great to have these items on hand in the freezer. It stops the need to run to the supermarket for one lemon. I'll bet it would be out of season and you'd be paying premium prices.

If you haven't thought about it before, growing a lemon tree is great. It looks good, the blossoms and fruit smell divine and a bowl of lemons on the kitchen bench is a little ray of sunshine in the middle of Winter. It can be grown in a pot too. Best of all, you'll get your money back from the cost of a tree in no time.

So if anyone offers you a bag of lemons, or your neighbour has a tree with too much fruit for them to use, you'll know what to do with it.