How to make a Twinkie without even trying

Lime tree

Meet our lime tree. I like to call him Leo. For years, he produced beautiful limes like clockwork (except for that year he went on strike, but we increased his wages and he went back into production). This year, Leo did something shocking, and I'm not even sure how he afforded the operation (It's not like we increased his wages by that much). Leo became a lemon tree.

Alien limes?

I noticed the change not long after I toted home a bag of lemons from my neighbors across the street. Wondering how Leo was doing (and where the heck my dang limes were), I went out back to check, looked up and was confronted with a very large, yellow lime. We're talking large in the neighborhood of a grapefruit. Alien large. So I summoned Mr. G. to the back yard.

Mr. G.: I think they're limes.
Me: They can't be limes. They're too big.
Mr. G.: I don't know what else they could be.
Me: I think they're lemons.
Mr. G.: You're crazy. How would a lemon tree plant itself in our back yard?

I swear Sue's garden looks a lot like this

There was only one thing to do: Ask Sue. Sue is my neighbor. She tells me she's 29 (like me), which is amazing considering she's a grandmother and has lived in our neighborhood since before I was born. I don't question it. Sue is simply marvelous and is my go-to person when I'm stumped on anything gardening related. She prefers fruits and vegetables to flowers. She's constantly pulling up her flower beds to plant more vegetables. She does something with Epsom salt that convinces everything she plants to produce beautiful fresh veggies. It's a trade secret. She also feeds our cats when we're out of town and usually calls to see if they can have a little extra chicken fat she just happens to have on hand. "It will make their coats so shiny." The answer to the chicken fat question is always "no" much to the cats' disappointment (How do I know they don't want chicken fat? How do I know they don't want shiny coats? They've been longing for chicken fat to give them shiny coats). Truth be told, Sue probably gives them the chicken fat anyway. She probably gave it them before she even called to check. You have to love Sue. It's impossible not to love Sue.

Lemons!

So I totally trusted Sue when she told me that lime trees could become lemon trees. I believed her even after I searched the Internet and learned this cannot happen. Even after I realized the more likely diagnosis is that my lime tree was planted with a lemon tree, and the lemon tree's only now producing (What gives, Louise? Have you been on strike?).

We've got lemons. Lots and lots of lemons

My real problem is you wouldn't believe how many lemons we have. Bowls and bowls and bowls of them. Louise was bountiful. My husband suggested I make lemonade. Are you kidding me? Too easy. I made a lemon meringue pie. It wasn't good. I left it in the fridge, hoping my husband would get a bad pie craving. He didn't so I tossed it in the garbage.

The Barefoot Contessa: A cooking goddess

Then I turned to the Barefoot Contessa and made her lemon cake. The recipe involves squeezing 100 lemons and grating them. I might be exaggerating, but after you've scraped your knuckles for the fifth time on a zester, you get cranky. The cake is actually two loaves. The batter smelled - and tasted (I have no fear of raw eggs) - heavenly. I decided to get fancy and make a traditional loaf plus mini loaves in the mini loaf pan I found at Wal-Mart for $1.50 after Christmas one year.

Is it a Twinkie or a lemon loaf?

The creation was lemony and scrumptious even though I threw down my spoon before making the glaze. My husband took one look at my glorious mini lemon loaves and said, "Are those Twinkies?" And then I realized I just spent two hours in the kitchen and scraped my knuckles raw to make Twinkies. If you need me, I'll be looking up Lemonhead recipes. How hard could it be?