Lemon Butter Memories.

My dear old gran who died two years ago three days before her 90th Birthday was a Zen Master in the kitchen, she, as she would tell it raised five children post second world war and learnt to make do with what she had when it came to meal times as food coupons were scarce.

 I can remember standing at the stove top at my parents place watching as gran would turn the mutant bush lemons that grew outside the kitchen window into jars filled with sweet yet sour lemon butter, it was rich yellow in colour and deffinately rich in taste, as you ate it your lips would automatically smack together and you could feel your gums tingling with delight at every mouthful.

She would bottle up her creation in odd shaped jars from the collection in mums pantry and then with all the love in the world she would travel some days by foot to the local nursing homes and share it with who she would call her oldies, some of these oldies being ten years her junior. She was a selfless woman, doing things for others and leaving herself last to be served.

Two years after my grans death and over thirty years since I would struggle to look over the stove top as she would stir the ingredients in the saucepan gently wth a wooden spoon I can still remember this delightful memory, I can taste the freshly squeezed lemon in the air and I can remember gran wacking my hands with the spoon as I attempted to sneak a preview of the best lemon butter I have ever tasted.

After a visit to my dads and being gifted with a coles bag filled with large ripe lemons I decided to attempt making lemon butter in tribute to my gran. One thing I must stress to anyone out there that may be reading this is to remember to remove the sticker from the fruit before you attempt to finely grate the rind from it.

I decided not to use my grans lemon butter recipe, instead I used a recipe out of one of the cook books that she left to me when she died. Lady Flo Bieke-Petersens Classic Country Cooking, I whisk the eggs, grated the rind and juiced the lemons, I placed all the required ingredients into a heavy based saucepan and like my gran would do I stood at the stove with a wooden spoon in hand and lovingly stired the mixture as it thickened into what I know lemon butter to be. I then poured it into warm, oddly shaped jars and stored it in the fridge to chill.

This evening when I returned home from work with a loaf of fresh bread I smoothered it with my lemon butter creation and ate it with passion, my lips smacked and my gums tingled, a memory had been reborned and I found myself wanting to eat it tll it was gone.