Hey there, Mary Sheila here from BioYouth Labs.
I'm sitting in front of this beautiful grandmother Meyer lemon tree that I've had the pleasure of living next to for quite a while now. I think this tree is older than me. It’s well established, big, beautiful, and delicious. The wonderful thing about citrus is that it goes off in the winter time.
The quality of citrus is that it's warming. One of the main nutrients that comes from citrus is vitamin C. We need more vitamin C in the winter to support our immune system. What a wonderful gift we're given every year, bright citrus fruits to brighten us in the winter, and support our immune system.
I want to share a few of my favorite ways to use lemons, especially because they’ve been so abundant for me.
One way I enjoy them on a daily basis is simply putting lemon into my water, especially hot water in the morning. I don’t make this too sour, but it gets my digestive juices going and even though it's acidic, it's alkalizing to the body, which is a great way to start the day.
You can add lemon to your water on a daily basis or a few times a week to get the benefits. Sometimes you can mix it with a little ginger or other herbs and spices you like.
The next way I use lemons is that anytime I cook grains or beans, I soak them first in water to make them more digestible. I squeeze a little citrus in with the water which will lower the pH of the water and help to activate the enzymes that will make grains and beans more digestible. Then I just rinse that water, but the citrus really helps to quicken this process, and make things more digestible.
I love the peel. You can simply grate the peel to get the zest. The zest is really high in something called limonene, which supports one of our pathways of liver detoxification. So that's a great benefit of the peel, helping us to break down and detoxify chemicals that we come in contact with in our day-to-day living.
You can put zest into so many things. You can sprinkle it on the top of a salad, add it to salad dressing. You could put zest into baked goods, you can grate zest onto roasted vegetables at the end. It's endless and you can Google different ways to use it, but zest is so yummy.
Using lemon juice to make a salad dressing is what I call my lazy dressing. When I want to make a salad and I don't feel like making a dressing, I'll just take some lemon, squeeze it over the top with a little olive oil. Put in a little salt and boom, I've got a dressing.
And sometimes friends are like, “Oh my goodness, I love this dressing. What did you do?”
It’s just fresh squeezed lemon juice, olive oil and salt, the lemon that steals the show every time.
Anytime you're marinating anything, lemon is a great way to go, as it helps break things down.
You can make lemonade in the summertime.
The sour of a lemon, just wakes anything up, flavorwise. Think about eating an avocado without lemon or lime. We add sour to enliven the flavors and wake them up. If you're ever making a pesto or you're eating leftovers and you need to jazz them up, add a little lemon and you'll jazz it right up.
You’ll be adding a little vitamin C, limonene and other nutrients. Lemons are a great thing to have on hand and you just need a little squeeze to make a huge difference.
And if lemons are pricey where you live, you could just use like 1/4 a day of the lemon in water and use a quarter at a time at different meals. Meyer lemons are usually the juicy ones, so they work well. And ask around to friends, if they have a tree, I’m sure they’d love to share. Put a message out to your neighbors and see if you can find some.
I'd love to hear how you love to eat your lemons, so please share in the comments, thanks so much for watching and have a great day.