One of the big advances in the home culinary revolution is the use of fresh lemons and limes in cooking, rather than the lemon juice in the plastic lemons so popular in my youth. And fresh lemons and limes are super-tasty, but occasionally one forgets to purchase a lemon, or the lemon gets all moldy, or one of a dozen other terrible fates for the fresh lemon. Last night was one of those nights, when I was making a honey-soy glazed salmon, and it wanted some citrus. What to do?

Well, I could have substituted another acid, such as a vinegar, but it just so happened that I picked up a shaker bottle of True Lemon, a new powdered lemon substitute. Instead of wasting precious refrigerator space with something that would be rarely used (i.e. the plastic lemon), I figured I could waste precious pantry space with something that should be rarely used. I decided that this would be a perfect night to try out the True Lemon.

Ideally, I would go back to the test kitchen and make up several different versions of the salmon dish, some with fresh lemon juice, some with plastic lemon juice (i.e. Real Lemon), and some with True Lemon, and have my testers decide what was best. In this case, I just didn't tell Melanie what I had done, and slyly asked her how the taste was. She said it was super-tasty (and she is not one to flatter my dishes without cause, let me assure you), and when I verified that the citrus component was pretty good, I admitted my deception.

It was at this point that she told me that she bought a lemon and it was right over there, but it was too late. Still, the base experiment has passed, and now it's just for me to decide if it's worth using as a non-emergency component, or if I should keep it next to the box of pesto paste.