when life gives you lemons…

You know the old saying, “What came first? The chicken or the egg?” I’m grappling with a similar dilemma; only for me, it’s a toss-up between the lemons and the lemon squeezer. I was grocery shopping a few weeks ago and, there, sandwiched between the Jazz apples (highly recommend) and the Meyer lemons (also highly recommend) was this bright, lime-green, hand-held citrus squeezer that caught my eye. It was $4.99, and I threw it in my cart.

Confession here: I did not need a citrus squeezer. I owned, at the time, no less than three extraction gadgets, including:

1)      Krupps electric juicer that was a wedding gift (still love—both juicer and spouse)…

2)      Nigella Lawson’s ceramic, Robin’s-egg-blue lemon twister (don’t know technical term—you twist the lemon on the juicer; one side catches the seeds, the other side allows you to pour out the juice)…

3)      And a classic wooden reamer.

But the cool lime-y color was just too great to pass up. And now I’m so in love with using this brilliant enamel-over-metal tool that the Florida citrus-grower’s guild called and asked if I’d like to run for office. With hardly an ounce of effort, my cool tool pummels the hell out of the tart fruit—turns the skin inside out, in fact. It’s produced by a whole host of manufacturers; my $4.99-er was by Culinary Elements. But I see them most commonly in the $12 range from www.norpro.com.

And now, another confession (she hangs her head in shame): I bought two more today…a larger-sized orange one, and a mini green one for limes. Hmm. Wondering if they make any for grapefruits….? Have you tried these babies? Tell me I’m not the only obsessed lemon-head out there.