Ta da!! I'm doing the happy dance, having just zested 17 Meyers lemons and dumped the zest into 1500 ml of Everclear, good old grain alcohol or, as I like to call it, the good stuff. Limoncello, on the way!! Not only that, the lemons have been juiced and poured into ice cube trays, and I'm feeling more like the bee-atch who wrote Under The Tuscan Sun every minute. You know, the one who planted an olive grove one evening, nurtured the trees overnight, and pressed the olives into award-winning oil before sunrise?
Trouble is, I now have to wait FORTY DAYS before doing anything at all, and even then all I get to do is add simple syrup, and then have to wait another FORTY DAYS, before I get to pour it into bottles, and maybe then, DRINK!! Maybe 80 days from now my fingers won't smell like lemons, because at this moment lemon oil seems to be part of my very fiber. I suggested to Bill that with all this lemon oil on my hands I should polish all the wood in the house, and he thought that was a very, very good idea, and that I should start right away. I've smelled worse than lemon oil in my day, I'm pretty sure.
So far the most fun part of the Limoncello exercise has been buying the Everclear and watching the checkout child try not to smirk. He told me that he hadn't had Everclear since college, which was probably last week, and I told him that I'd invented Everclear before he was born. He believed me.
I was thinking that I'd put the finished product (if I live to see the day!) into the Everclear bottles, so I filled a huge stainless steel bowl full of hot water to let them soak overnight to remove the labels. I was scraping at the labels after about three minutes, and I don't think that's a good sign -- if I can't wait overnight to remove the labels, how in the hell am I going to wait 40 and 40 more days for the limoncello?? This, I ask you.
Love. Janet
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3 comments:
Goof Off will take the labels right off and give you cancer at the same time.
The lemons becoming a part of your fiber reminded me of an old movie. Have you seen a movie with Burt Lancaster and Susan Sarandon? It's about 20 years old. He plays a philandering gambler and she is a dealer at a club in Atlantic City...OOOOO that's the name of it! Atlantic City! Anyway, one of the sexiest scenes ever in a movie is one with him looking out his window and watching her stand at her kitchen sink performing a camp bath with lemons. That's back in the day when movies were judged by their imagination and story instead of the number of $$$ in the budget.
I live for Goof Off -- keep it right next to my Life Out (similar to White Out, but for bigger mistakes.)
I know exactly which scene in Atlantic City you speak of, and I love that movie. I spent a summer on the Jersey Shore (Avalon) when I graduated from high school, and also got to know Atlantic City and Wildwood -- fond and interesting memories. Stories to come.
OOOH, Wildwood was the place to be when I was a teenager! My parents were both from Jersey, and though my dad was in the Air Force, we spent many a vacation on the Jersey shore. My cousins would take us to Wildwood or for a tamer experience, we'd visit Great Uncle Ed and Aunt Eleanor in Briganteen (I know I spelled that wrong, but I don't remember ever seeing the sign...) or another set of relatives in Ocean City.
The smell of lemons is a wonderful one, Janet- maybe you should make some perfume from the leftovers. While you're waiting your 80 days, you could design your own labels for your special Limoncello...Janet's Lucious Limoncello or something of the sort with something sexy on the label- perhaps a picture of you all sweaty from teaching Nia... :) The men out there will swoon...
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