There are some kitchen tasks we all dread -- cutting onions, pulling out the insides of a chicken, and for many of us, squeezing lemons and limes. Here are some tips for getting the most out of your lemons, and for getting most of your lemon juice into your bowl, not on your fingers.

On the Today show, Epicurious.com Editor Tanya Steel shows Hota Kotb and Kathie Lee Gifford how to make a simple key lime pie.

Even if you can make a key lime pie in your sleep, it's a fun video (even though they say to use pre-squeezed key lime juice if you can't find limes - eek! That's like using lemon juice instead of real lemons in lemon squares!) The taste just can't compare.

Well, the video is fine until good ol' Kathie Lee ruins the moment by first commenting on the amount of calories in the condensed can of milk (Steel smartly replies "Yeah, but who's counting calories?") and then likens the ingredient to colostrum (and Kotb remarks, "Buzzkill.")

Cook much, Kathie Lee? Yeesh - don't invite her over when you're making key lime pie. She'll totally ruin your appetite.

For me, the presentation of a dish is critically important. Here's a trick for turning orange peels into beautiful serving bowls for almost anything you can create.

We're coming down to the end of citrus season, but there are still enough oranges, lemons and limes out there to inspire the celebration of these flavorful and aromatic fruits. This cake is a great example of what you can do with a few lemons and oranges. The recipe is adapted from one by Ina Garten and the image is brought to us by Flickr user and blogger Amanda.

My grandmother Bunny had a Meyer lemon tree in her Southern California backyard when I was growing up. I didn't know them as Meyer lemons back then, I just knew that they were sweeter than the lemons that came from the grocery store and that I could bite into one without shuddering in puckery pain. Whenever we'd bring a bag of them home to our house, my mom would squeeze them and freeze the juice in ice cube trays to use to chill and flavor glasses of water.

These days Meyer lemons are all the rage and there isn't much I wouldn't give to have access to Bunny's bountiful tree. Laurie from the blog Ladle and Whisk has written a post about Getting the Most 'Zing' Out of Meyer Lemons. She goes beyond freezing the juice and squeezing them over salads to offer tips on how to use these delicate and hard to find fruits in your home cooking.

If you're a college football fan, then you know that states have been facing off with each other since last week. However, in what we could call a foodish Citrus Bowl, Florida has won out over California in a lawsuit in which Florida Agriculture officials issues a quarantine against citrus shipments from California. The quarantine was issued to protect the State of Florida's citrus industry from a potential plant fungus. California citrus growers sought a temporary injunction in order to keep shipping, but the Florida judge denied it.

We're not quite sure what the big deal here is with California. Florida already has oranges, so why wouldn't they want to keep California oranges out of the state? We're sure there are plenty of people on the western half of the country who can eat all those oranges.

California has been hit by an unusually bad cold snap this year and the effects of the freezing weather have really taken a toll on crops - and the bad weather isn't even over yet. Some estimates say that at least 75% of the citrus crop has been destroyed and others say even more, drawing from the more than 80% that was ruined the last time the state suffered a severe cold snap. The weather is so bad that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency in the 10 agricultural counties that have been hardest hit by the weather.

86% of the lemons and 21% of all the oranges sold in the US are grown in California, which makes it the largest citrus-producing state in the country. The loss of crops is devastating to the farmers, but it will also hit consumers hard at the grocery store. Orange and lemon prices are already increasing and the wholesale price has more than doubled in the last seven days alone. Juice prices will increase as well. "The price spike is expected to hit supermarkets in the next two weeks, when the present inventory dwindles."

While citrus is taking the biggest hit, basically every winter crop in California has been damaged, from avocados to lettuce, and consumers across the country will feel the effects of doubling and tripling prices in the produce department, especially if they want to buy US-grown fruits and vegetables.

Jam and honey are the new orange - orange marmalade, that is. The slightly sweet preserve is rapidly falling out of fashion in England. It first gained popularity in England in the 17th century, when citrus fruits became common and the preservation technique used for cooking quinces was applied to them. Since that time the spread has only grown in popularity and, for at least the past several decades, could be considered to be a breakfast staple in many homes. In the last year, however, 440,000 households in Britain stopped buying marmalade. Statistics indicate that the reason for the decline may be younger consumers, as most in the under 45 age group consider it to not be sweet enough. 81% of marmalade is eaten by those over 45.

With the decline of marmalade comes the rise of jam and honey, which grow more popular every year, despite reports last year that indicated that jam, too, was falling from favor. Honey is up almost 5%, while jam is up 1.5%.

Retailers and manufacturers alike are now trying to find ways to draw more children to marmalade

Better stock up on your OJ. Or maybe you wanna get your vitamin C from a different source.

The Florida citrus industry is facing a possible shortage. Though two different analyst groups came up with different estimates for citrus output this year, both numbers are far below the average production of 220 million boxes.

The problem? Well, where do we begin? As if humans simply taking over acreage for development wasn't enough, devastating droughts, horrible hurricanes, and a whole menage a trois of diease has damaged citrus trees. However, the true effect is difficult to predict. According to the article in the New York Times, "Until hurricane season ends Nov. 30 and the potential for a winter freeze passes next spring, the best prediction anyone can offer of how many oranges Florida will produce this season is an educated guess."

When we featured The Pastry Queen Cookbook last week, I remarked upon how impressive the lemon-lime meringue tarts, called Texas Big Hairs, on the cover were. Little did I expect to see them in all their glory on the food blog Culinary Concoctions. The name of the tarts comes from the amount of meringue that is piled on top - and in true Texas style, bigger is better. These individual-sized tarts are more, well, tart than a typical lemon meringue pie would be because of the liberal addition of lime. They still have the perfect contrast of light, sweet meringue and velvety citrus custard, though, and the extra meringue makes each bite seem even lighter than you could hope for.

Recently, someone asked me if there was a difference between the "zest" of a citrus fruit and the "peel." In short, the answer is yes. The peel is the name for the whole skin of the fruit, which is comprised of two layers: the zest and the pith. The zest is the colored, outer surface of the fruit while the pith is the soft, white inner layer. The vast majority of recipes will call for the zest of a fruit only. The pith is actually bitter and gives an unpleasant aftertaste if eaten, but the zest contains the very flavorful oils/essence of the fruit.

Once you know what the zest is, the question is how to get it off. The layer is very thin compared to the fruit as a whole, but it can be cut off with a knife and then chopped into fine pieces. A more efficient way is to use either a zester (pictured) or a microplane, both of which are tools that slice off only the zest from a fruit. A zester produces long, thin strips that need to be finely chopped, while a microplane naturally creates a very fine chop that needs no further alteration before being added to a recipe.

I came up with this recipe for pineapple margaritas when I was making my pineapple-jicama salsa last week. I was already thinking that margaritas would be a good thing to serve with the grilled salmon and salsa dish and, when I ended up with a lot of extra pineapple juice, things just fell into place. These margaritas are a bit sweeter than the average plain margarita, but they still have the tang of lime and a bit of kick from the tequila. I would normally salt the rim of my classes, but sugaring the rim of the glass works better for this drink, and it's easier to do than it looks. Just moisten the rim of your glass, either with water or a bit of pineapple juice, and dip it into some sugar that is spread evenly on a small plate. Garnish with a slice of pineapple and you're ready for happy hour!

Pineapple Margaritas
2/3 cup pineapple juice
1/3 cup margarita mix
1/3 cup tequila
1/6 cup triple sec
2 tbsp fresh lime juice

Shake with ice and serve in ice filled, sugar-rimmed glasses.

Makes 2 drinks.

[Photo and recipe by Nicole Weston]

Ghirardelli has been making delicious dark chocolates since the company opened more than 150 years ago, but to meet growing consumer demand, they have introduced some new, gourmet chocolates. Intense Dark Gourmet Chocolate Bars are blends of unique Ghirardelli dark chocolate with new flavors and varying cocoa contents, designed to appeal to a wide variety of chocolate lovers. The four flavors include:

Twilight Delight - 72% cacao smooth dark chocolate
Citrus Sunset - 60% cacao dark chocolate with orange and caramel crunch
Espresso Escape - 60% cacao dark chocolate with finely ground espresso beans
Toffee Interlude - 42% cacao dark chocolate with toffee and carmelized almonds

Ghirardelli hosted an event with chocolate experts including Alice Medrich and Elizabeth Faulkner to determine the best food and drink pairings with these chocolates, all of which can be viewed here. My favorite suggestion is to pair Espresso Escape with marshmallows to make "adult" s'mores. Yum! The 3.5 ounce bars should be in stores around the country by now, but I have only seen them online so far.

As of late, one of my favorite warm weather, pre-dinner drinks is Campari and soda with a big twist of orange zest. Pack rocks (old-fashioned) glass with ice, wedge your orange zest in, add 2-3 ounces of Campari, top the rest with sparkling water (I usually use San Pellegrino or LaCroix) and give a stir. Campari itself is a great aperitif: bitter, complex and refreshing. To my taste, some fizz and citrus makes the effect that much better.

[Photo: Nick Vagnoni]

The purveyors of the zero-calorie citrus products True Lemon and True Lime sent a few samples to Sarah and Nicole to taste test. The products are dehydrated, crystallized versions of their namesake fruits and have zero carbs and zero calories. The company says that they are designed for many uses, from cooking to flavoring drinks and are great for use by people who only need a bit of juice at a time and do not want to waste a whole fruit for a tablespoon of juice. While juice can be replaced with either True Lemon or True Lime, they are not meant to replace zest in recipes.

Nicole's Review:

To get a good feel for how True Lemon compared to a real lemon, I did a direct comparison. One packet of True Lemon is roughly equivalent to 1 tablespoon of fresh lemon juice, so I mixed up each with a bit of water and took a few sips. On the positive side, it does taste like lemon. Unfortunately, its acidity was much more aggressive than the plain lemon juice - meaning that the True Lemon was more bitter, more puckery than my real lemon. I know that I'm sensitive to bitter tastes, but the plain lemon juice tasted sweet in comparison! For fun, based on the recommendations of others, I tasted the True Lime directly out of the packet. It was very acidic, but very lime-like. Mixed with sugar, I think that this would be the ultimate way to rim a martini glass for a Cosmo.

Overall, I think that there are a lot of potential uses for these. I think that they'd be great in cooking or when you want a really sharp flavor contrast, and it is very handy to have a few packets around the house in case you need them. For drinks like water and iced tea, though, I'll still stick with the real juice when I can

Sarah's Review:

I tasted both the True Lemon and True Lime straight out of the packets first, and they certainly seem stronger in "sourness" than a real fruit, but could that just be a perception thing because liquidy juice must seem lighter than a concentrated solid crystal? I can't tell.

Mixed with water and some sugar to make a lime-ade and lemonade, they both tasted fine, though unlike Nicole, I wasn't able to do a direct comparison with the real thing. I will, however, say that the limeade tasted pretty good as compared to previous times that I've mixed lime juice with water and sugar.

For now, it's enough to say that they taste fine in a drink, but the real test will come this weekend when I try baking with them.

[Photo by Nicole Weston]