A lemon a day to keep the doctor away

September 18, 2008

The Lady M story continutes………………..

Lady M never believes in ‘Too much of a good thing’, especially when the good thing is offered very cheap. That’s how she came into possession of a big bag of lemon from the farmer’s market. Loaded with the bright yellow fruit, she set to work her magic around the house. Started off with displaying some of the yellow citrus in cute fruit bowls all around the house. The good thing about lemons is they hold the colour and shape for a long time and so she doesn’t have to bother to stop near the garage shop to pick up a fresh bunch of flowers every 2 weeks. Good for the purse , ahem.

After 4 such lemon baskets Lord M decided to intervene and showed the Red signal. The ever enthusiastic lady decided to put the lemon into other uses, if Lord feels that 4 bowls of lemons scattered around the house is an overkill. The next morning Lord was rudely awaken from his innocent sleep to see the lady standing in front with a tumbler and a smile. Ever so thankful for the small mercies in life, the Lord thanked the god that the lady had finally came into her senses to supply the man of the manor with a bed coffee, later to be discovered how wrong his assumption was. Though nothing compared to a cup of freshly brewed tea, the pale golden concoctation in the tumbler was pleasant in taste. Little did he realize that he was being the guinny pig to test the weight reduction powers of half a lemon mixed with a tea spoon of honey and lukewarm water, taken first thing in the morning. Lord could not complain, its much better than ½ an hour’s brisk walk in the cold morning.

The Lady also started a routine of taking a glass of lemon juice early in the morning as it is believed to cleanse your system and rejenuate the metabolism. Throw the lady hi-fi words like metabolism and health, and you can get her eat cat litter.

Lady offered half a glass of hot water with some lemon juice in it to Lord M, with an offhand ‘behave like grown up’, when he came back on Friday evening complaining about soar throat. Poor Lord M’s hope for some nice hot soup and lots of snoozes in front of the TV during the weekend looks like going in the drain. And to add to his irritation, the soar throat felt much better the next day. No more excuses for snuggling under the quilt and putting the feet up. Here I come, vaccum cleaner!

However, the ever optimistic Lord M tried to plead an upset stomach to get away with the cleaning task, only to be offered a black tea with lemon juice to settle the stomach.

The lemon was taking up bigger proportions of the Lady’s conversation with friends and suddenly she realized that she was the only ignorant one when it comes to lemon power.

Sheila reveled that she dispenses lemon juice mixed equally with ginger juice and honey to her toddler in the wake of the recent government ban on cough remedies for young children, and has realized that it works much better than the shop-bought remedies.

The health conscious Jasmine in the group takes lemon juice before breakfast as Lemon is a good source of Vitamin C and can be used as a natural Vitamin C supplement. Lemon juice taken daily can help prevent cold and associated sickness. It was also news to the lady that lemon contains more potassium than apple or grapes, which is beneficial to the heart.

The group, after a lot of peeping through the window ledges found out the secret behind the thick lustrous curls of the neighbor, who applies lemon juice to head to relieve acute dandruff and as a good hair conditioner. The lady did some internet research on this and came to understand that care should be taken to wash off the juice after 20 minutes. The longer the juice is left on, the chances of hair fall increases.

And so the lemon enthusiast is born and the food in the Menon household took a lemony turn - curries lazed with subtle tones of lemon juice, salads with small chopped lemon wedges, Big wedges to be squeezed on the fried chicken and fish for that tangy flavour and a crispy peanut snack with loads of chopped onions, tomatoes, coriander leaves, green chilles and fried peanut all smothered in lemon juice!

Lord M , though appreciates the food, desperately hopes that the lady would forget the cold and soar throat remedies – he would otherwise have to rack his brain for more feasible ailments during the weekend which cant be cured with lemon – or hope that the vaccum cleaner breaks!