When Life Gives You Lemons...

So my dad bought a costco size bag of lemons. He used 1 or two up, (just the peels), and the rest were just sitting there. So I decided to go use some of them up. First I made lemonade, (awesome) and then there were still a lot more lemons left. I talked to my mom, and she gave me the idea to make dinner that night, and I made lemon chicken. My last idea was to make a lemon meringue pie for the desert, so I did! It was hard to make, it was my first time making meringue but it turned out pretty good!

So the first thing I made was the lemonade, I used a fairly basic recipe, first you make a "syrup", by mixing two cups of hot water with a cup of sugar. The reason why you do this is to make sure the sugar dissolves, rather than settling on the bottom. Then you have to juice the lemons, I used about 6 lemons, to get about a cup of lemon juice.


Then you mix it together with another 4 cups of cold water, and you have lemonade! I used a slight variant of this recipe:
http://elise.com/recipes/archives/000479perfect_lemonade.php

The next thing I made was some lemon chicken. The recipe I got from the foodday section of the oregonian, I have yet to check the website if they have it. Its really easy, you just stuff a lemon in a chicken, and let it cook in an oven, for about an hour and a half, flipping it kinda soon. Just make sure the chicken is not undercooked, as it happened to me.



The last thing I made was a lemon meringue pie, and that was pretty hard. I used the recipe from:
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Grandmas-Lemon-Meringue-Pie/Detail.aspx
to make it, with a couple of changes. The first thing I did differently was for making the meringue, I either had a bit of an egg yolk in the egg white mixture, or I added not enough sugar. My first meringue did not form little peaks, so I made another one, paying more attention to seperating the eggs. THe meringue when formed correctly looks like this:


Then you have a pie crust and put the sugar mixture in it, then the meringue, and you need to make sure the meringue covers the pie, to the edges. Put it in the oven for a bit and then take it out when the meringue is golden brown.


Let it settle for an hour, and then refrigirate for a bit and enjoy.