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RECIPE: World’s best limoncello, direct from Italy

I had never heard of limoncello before the summer of 2007. It was then that my then-wife and I embarked on a Mediterranean cruise, which included a visit to Sorrento, Italy, the birthplace of limoncello, and the place where they grow the largest lemons I’ve ever seen. I saw lemons at a market that were literally the size of my head!

When we were in Sorrento, I had my first taste of this lemon liqueur called limoncello. It was great — lemony, very high proof, served very cold in a frozen shotglass, and it burned all the way down. The drink is meant to be a digestivo, which means it is served after a meal to aid in digestion.

Of course, you can use it to get hammered, too. And if you make it the way I do, it won’t take all that much.

limoncello

Not that I recommend getting hammered. I don’t have more than one drink of this stuff, except on special occasions.

Now, if you’ve had the limoncello that you buy in stores here in the U.S., you probably think it’s a sweet drink. Yeah, the stuff I’ve found in liquor stores is. But that’s not right!

The authentic limoncello I had in Sorrento was anything but sweet.

Fortunately, as I was sitting in the Sorrentan pizzeria, expressing to my then-wife how delicious I thought this drink was, the guy behind the counter overheard and proudly told me he made it himself.

“Really? How do you do that?” I asked.

He gave me the barest of recipes in broken English, but he did emphasize, “Use grain alcohol, not vodka!”

I took what he said and experimented until I arrived at what I feel is a very authentic home-made limoncello. The nice thing about making it yourself, of course, is that you can adapt it to your own taste, so feel free to do so.

How to make limoncello…

Ingredients

  • 1 liter of Everclear — Do NOT buy the lower-proof versions. Use only the 189- or 190-proof kind.
  • 5-7 medium to large lemons
  • 1 liter of clean water
  • 2 TB granulated sugar – You can use more or less to your taste. When I first made this recipe I used 3/4 cup!

Equipment

  • Vegetable peeler or grater to peel or zest the lemons
  • Wide-mouth 1.5 liter (or larger) airtight jar to store the Everclear and lemon peels during infusion
  • Something to remove the peels from the Everclear after the infusing is done, like a spaghetti spoon
  • Clean coffee filter to strain infused Everclear
  • Pot to heat simple syrup on the stove
  • Bottles to put your limoncello into when it’s ready — I like to use flip-top bottles, but you could use leftover Everclear, or any other, bottles
  • Large, plastic funnel to help you fill the bottles

Directions

  1. Wash the lemons to remove dirt and pesticides.
  2. Peel or zest the YELLOW ONLY from the lemons. Try not to get any white. I peel, because it’s easier.
  3. Combine Everclear with the lemon rind in a resealable airtight widemouth jar.
  4. Steep for 14 to 21 days in a dark, cool place, like a cupboard. Turn the jar every couple days to mix it up a bit. Just one simple upside down turn, then back.
  5. On the last day of steeping, combine the water and sugar in a pot over medium-low heat.
  6. Stir the sugar-water mixture continually until all the sugar is dissolved and the syrup is clear.
  7. Remove from heat and allow to cool.
  8. Remove the peels/zest from the Everclear. I use a spaghetti spoon to pull them out, but however you can figure to do it is fine.
  9. Strain the infused Everclear through a coffee filter or some such thing to remove excess solids.
  10. Funnel half of the Everclear into each of two one-liter bottles.
  11. Fill the bottles the rest of the way with the cooled simple syrup.
  12. Put the bottles into the freezer.

Limoncello is best served in a thick frozen shotglass straight out of the freezer. It’s meant for sipping, not shooting, but do what you will.

By the way, I have also tried this recipe with oranges, tangerines, and limes. Oranges and tangerines — EXCELLENT! Limes — TERRIBLE!

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If you want to be fit, you have to commit!

Did you ever have this conversation with yourself?

SELF 1: “It’s time to work out, but I have other stuff to do.”
SELF 2: “Sure I have other stuff, but I need to get my workout in!”
SELF 1: “Good point, but I already missed Wednesday, because of that big meeting. Might as well skip today, too, and get back into it on Monday.”

There are always things that can happen to take the place of your regular workout time. The boss calls a meeting. You get stuck on the phone with a client. Your kid is sick and you need to pick her up from school. Life gets in the way.

But if you are committed, what you do is shift the workout, do it anyway, earlier, later, whenever. If for some reason you really can’t get your workout in that day, you do it the next day.

And you never — never — use the fact that you missed the last workout as an excuse to miss the next one. That is a recipe for failure.

No matter how many days a week you plan to exercise — 1, 3, 5, 7 — you gotta stick to the schedule!

Have you seen the infomercial for Tony Horton’s P90X that includes the tagline/motto “Press play every day”? That is a powerful idea. The P90X program has something for you to do every day of the 90 days it lasts. Okay, well, one day a week is optional — you can either rest or join Tony in a stretching routine, so, really, they do allow you a day off every week, if you choose — and that’s a good thing.

But the idea that I needed to put that DVD into the player and “press play every day” — that little mantra — kept me going from time to time on those days when I was not so motivated, by reminding me of my commitment to P90X. In fact, it still reminds me now to get a workout in, long after having completed the program.

The financial gurus always tell you to prioritize your savings plan by “paying yourself first,” before all the money goes to bills.

Do the same with fitness. Prioritize it. Put your workout time above other things that are pulling at you. When you do that, you’ll find yourself truly committed to fitness, and that’s the only way you’ll succeed in the long run.

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Do you have fitness goals? They might be your problem.

I have always loved school. I enjoy learning. I wish I could just be a fulltime student, but that’s not financially possible. Still, even as a non-student, I read a lot, do tons of research, all in an effort to learn something new, or learn more about my favorite subjects and activities. I just really enjoy learning new things, processing new information.

I believe that most people don’t share my love of school. They look at school not as a way to learn, but as a means to an end, a way to get a piece of paper that will allow them to get a better job, make more money.

People who look at school like that focus more on completing tasks — getting that papers or project done — rather than learning. They really don’t care if they learn, as long as they complete the tasks that allow them to collect the prize at the end. Of course, some learning cannot help but happen along the way, but it’s coincidental.

They have an ultimate goal for school, and that’s to get a degree. Once the goal is completed, well, that’s enough of school. Why do you think many professions have requirements for continuing education? Gotta force people to do it, because they won’t do it on their own.

So what does this have to do with fitness?

The nice thing about fitness is that a goal-oriented approach can work — at least for a while. Staying focused on completing tasks — hitting it hard every weekday 10:00am to 11:00am, for example — can help keep you in good shape and get you to your goal, whatever it is: losing 50 pounds, getting down to a 32 waist size, being able to do 300 pushups.

But what happens when you reach the goal? What happens on the other side? Too often, the fitness training stops, and, yup, we all know what happens after that. The fitness level gradually deteriorates, and we end up where we were before we started … or worse.

This fitness goal orientation is easily illustrated by a phenomenon I have noted recently because of my participation in Facebook.

Facebook has allowed me to follow people as they announce “I’m getting married in 9 months,” then, quite often soon thereafter, “I’m on a diet” or “I’m working out”.

This is great! Anything that motivates you to get into shape is okay in my book.

But I wonder how many of those people, motivated to look good on their wedding days, continue their fitness quests after the big day.

The problem is the goal. Once the goal is reached, what is the motivation to continue the behavior that was geared toward reaching it?

Fitness really has no end goal, it is an end unto itself. Sure, you can — and I do — have targets that get and keep you motivated. My most recent one was a strong desire to finish Insanity. Did it.

Now what? … Exactly. I could just quit, knowing I finished Insanity, and feel pretty good about that. But that would not keep me in shape.

So, it seems to me that while fitness can and should involve goals, we shouldn’t focus on those goals as be-all-end-alls. In fact, we should guard against this mindset.

Fitness is really a lifestyle. The goals are short-term pieces of a lifelong plan to get into and stay in shape. Use them, but don’t make them the primary focus. Keep your eye on your goals, but try to focus instead on fitness for fitness’ sake!

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Fear of falling back into old habits

I wouldn’t call it exactly a “fear”, but, wow, I am really not interested in falling back into my old habits, which include:

  • overeating
  • overdrinking
  • oversittingonmyass

all of which lead, of course, to being

  • overweight

I may tend to obsess about this. I measure my waist at least once daily. If I go more than a day without working out, I get nervous that I may enjoy sitting around too much. When I indulge myself by occasionally feasting on crap food I used to eat all the time, I become concerned that this indulgence will become the norm.

And I think those “fears” are the key to keeping the old habits at bay.

As soon as I don’t care any more, the moment I no longer feel at least a twinge of guilt for engaging in relatively unhealthy behaviors, that is when I will have a problem.

But as of right now, it’s all good.

I can have that night where I eat every carb in the house, knowing that the next day I will scale back to meat and veggies only.

I can go to the occasional party and drink too much of my homemade limoncello, knowing that I will not drink again for a week after that. (Well, unless it’s a multi-day party, in which case, all bets are off ;=)

I can skip a couple workouts in a row, knowing that I’ll be at it hard the day I come back, probably with an extra few minutes for good measure.

And all this is based on a fear of falling back, a fear of being fat again, of being out of shape again. Yes, it is, I think, after all, a “fear”.

But it’s a healthy one that I think I’ll keep at the front of my mind.

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How about eating right half the time? Will that work for you?

Look at yourself. Take a good, hard look. Do you like what you see?

Maybe you do. Congratulations!

pizzaBut maybe you’re disappointed you’re not in better shape. Maybe you’ve been trying to break the fast-food habit, but aren’t sure how to start. If so, this post is for you!

Our body composition is primarily — 80% — determined by what we eat. Sure, we need to exercise to build muscle and get fully fit, but we can’t get away from the fact that we can do the most good for our bodies by eating properly.

Now, I know, we’ve all been on diets that failed. We just can’t seem to stick with them. Even if the results are good, our lives make dieting challenging, especially if those diets are particular restrictive, like the ones that allow only 1000 calories a day or that totally disallow anything with sugar in it.

Because of those kinds of eating plans, people often get wrapped around the diet axle. It’s too much of a commitment. It’s too hard to avoid all those “bad” foods.

Think of all the workplace dietary health hazards, like birthday cakes, donuts and breakfast tacos someone brings in, cookies someone baked. Heck, it’s downright impolite to refuse to eat those things!

Yeah, it’s tough to stay on a healthy eating plan.

But if you really are disappointed with your choices, it’s time to make better ones.

So here’s an idea. Instead of stopping all your current dining habits completely, and jumping into some diet that you know you’ll never stay on, how about you eat healthy, say, 50% of the time.

Half the time. Half your meals — healthy. Just half.

So, then, 4 days a week — healthy eating. The other 3 days, you eat whatever you like.

(Yeah, I already moved your half up to 57% with the 4 out of 7 days thing, but you can live with that, right? It’s just so much cleaner and easier to keep track of that way, instead of having to factor in a half-day there somewhere….)

Your first inclination might be to make your days Friday, Saturday, and Sunday — the weekend — but you may want to rethink that. Do you really need to let go on Sunday? Heck, that’s the start of a new week and a good day to get back into the swing of things.

Thursday through Saturday? That might work for you. Or Monday and Thursday and Saturday. Or change them up every week depending on what’s going on. Up to you.

The whole point of this post is to remind you that you don’t have to be 100% health-conscious 100% of the time. I threw 50% out there, but, seriously, any number you can use to help yourself get more fit — 10%, 25%, 50% — that’s all good. Anything’s better than 0%, right?

Hopefully, once you get into it and start seeing positive results, start looking and feeling better, you’ll decide to add another day of healthy eating, and another day. Six out of seven days of healthy eating would be 86%. That’s pretty good.

But, um, I wouldn’t go beyond that — you have to leave room for the occasional pizza binge, ya know?