May 30 2007

Text By Greg Fallis

When life gives you lemons, the saying goes, make lemonade. The humble lemon...over the centuries it has been blessed and cursed, praised and condemned. Now it is reduced to nothing more than an ingredient for a tart summer refreshment.

There was a time, though, when the lemon was a heavyweight. During the Inquisition, Catalonian priests used lemons in their excommunication rituals. They thought it was a cursed fruit, created by the devil. "The Evil One hath not succeeded in making it as round and perfect as the orange; it hath come from his hands as a deformed fruit." The famous Venetian lover Giacomo Casanova, on the other hand, believed lemons were an aphrodisiac. And Virgil described the lemon as an antidote to many poisons.

There are records of a thriving Egyptian trade in lemons during the Fatamid caliphate (909-1171 CE). Amphorae containing lemon juice were shipped throughout the region. The juice was commonly mixed with water and sugar to make qatarmizat. That's right...lemonade.

When life gives you lemons....