Life gave me lemons so I made candied lemon peels

I make no bones about working 2 jobs and going 90mph through life.  As the saying goes, a rolling stone gathers no moss, but I figure that also holds true to germs and cooties as well.  I stay healthy by getting 8 winks a night, a good diet, and lots of walking.

Well, the cosmos tried to throw me under a bus this week by tearing a muscle in my leg.  I am naturally a very brisk walker and I was just handed a speeding ticket.  This week I’m getting lapped by old ladies with walkers.

Doctor said no crutches needed, just go slow and take it easy, but this sucks.  It took me the full cycle of the cross walk to cross the street.  I don’t even have a good story to tell.  I wasn’t dancing naked on a bar or even skipping through a field of daisies.  I stepped off a ladder.  I’m glad I have a sense of humor about life.

I can’t walk, but I can still stand in the kitchen and make something yummy.  One of the things I’ve been finding as I’ve been experimenting with scone and muffin recipes is the flavors aren’t very strong.  As a cook, I can look at a recipe and know I need to add more, but deciphering that in a baking recipe is taking me a bit of learning.

I’ve tried a lemon ginger scone a few times with not much success.  But I think I’m almost there.  In my next attempt I’m adding both candied ginger and candied lemon peel.  I want to know I’m eating lemon and ginger.

Again I sought google’s vast offering of recipes and found many, but the one that struck my eye was another local gal, Luna Cafe.  Sounded like she had experimented and read the same recipes I had found, so why reinvent the wheel.  I chose well.

While the recipe seems a bit step-heavy (blanch 3 times?!), it was well worth it. The result is a bright lemon flavor with no bitterness.   The one thing I did differently from her is that I used a vegetable peeler to remove the peel and I got very little pith.

We go through a lot of lemons at the still and I’ll be making a more concerted effort to save the peels because this will now be a staple in my kitchen.  Stay tuned for my Lemon Ginger Scones.