lemon glut

with an abundance of lemons in the last week a kind of citrus panic set in. likely because it seems like lemons are never cheap. in the desert. we will pay 99 cents for a sad, dried fist of a lemon. California dwellers and those in the Mediterranean must balk at this. having themselves a glut of lemons, sometimes growing over into storm drains and onto neighbor's lawns. but here, there is something festive about 39 cents for a lemon. someone somewhere had a magical moment where every lemon picked left three more on the tree! lemons galore! fill your shopping trolley and then heave and squeak it out into your car. drive home with the car body scrapping the tires with weight and then wheelbarrow them into your tiny house.

and then?

that's the panicky part. what to do with so many lemons? they cannot be pureed and dried, or juiced with any real sense of goodness. (lemonade in october?) but they can be pickled and preserved! they can be persuaded into marmalade and they can be baked. and thank goodness for that. (more on preserving lemons later.)

this is a gem of a lemon tart recipe. and thank goodness for being smitten. thank goodness further for making use of a whole lemon! a few of them! not peeling and zesting. not cutting away flesh and pith. simply slicing into fine wheels, pitting and ending up with a lemon tart that convinces even non-dessert eaters, and those who do not believe in sweets, to sneakily place ever widening wedges of it onto their plates until the gleam of the tart pan's base shows and we must begin again. lordy.

et voila. and the rest happened so fast (bake, cool, slice, eat, repeat, wash tart pan.) that those pictures must wait, alas, for another day.