101 things a girl can do with a lemon

To be strictly accurate, two things, both good.

This morning was largely taken up by shuffling around Tesco with a trolley with one square wheel, so naturally my thoughts turned to drink as soon as I got home. Vodka and lemonade, for preference, so I am in the middle of making lemonade. The above shows the rind of four unwaxed lemons in a large jug with a litre of boiling water and 100 grammes of sugar. When it cools the juice from the four lemons will be poured in through a sieve, the whole stirred and decanted into a slightly prettier jug to sit in the fridge until tonight. The lemon wedges are a Bright Idea - when I was in the frozen food section I saw bags of frozen lemon and lime wedges for adding to drinks, and thought "what a good idea". I seem permanently to be throwing out shrivelled up half-lemons that I used to accessorise a G&T several weeks ago, or finding that after all there are none in the fridge. I couldn't bring myself to buy ready-frozen wedges though, so I am making my own, open-freezing them first, then decanting into a box later. It seems to be a day for filling up the freezer, as this afternoon's project is a vast batch of pasta sauce for tea and freezing. I am a great fan of cooking as little as possible.

I will also be getting on with my sleeve, as seen above. I had thought about knitting both at the same time, but doing the front (where the central stitches are cast off and both sides shaped simultaneously for quite a way) reminded me how much I actually hate knitting two things at once. I seem to spend far more time untangling the balls of wool and trying to work out which piece needs to be knitted next and which side I am on at the moment and then standing up and finding that I have mysteriously managed to wrap the wool completely around myself and now can't walk than I do actually knitting. So I won't be doing that for the sleeves.

I shudder to think how much worse the whole sorry tangle could have been if I had a cat.