Grating Limes

The previous tenant at our new place was kind enough to bequeath us a strong stale cigarette smell (complete with filled ashtray!). Since moving, we have spent the last couple of weeks trying everything short of black magic to try and rid our home of the lingering smell - incense, scented candles, oil burner with lavender oil... even leaving the windows open and turning blue around the edges with cold... all to little or no avail - while all the tricks gave us great smells, they were only transitory and apparently only covering rather than removing.

Enter the answer to every question I've ever posed or not posed yet: google. My dear search engine friend tells me that one great way to remove that odious odour is with the help of a little peel from any of the noble citrus family. After raiding my dwindling fruit collection, I had the luck of finding:

• One very ancient, bordering on petrified, lemon
• A few old and slightly too soft oranges
• One healthy looking lime

Forever the optimist, I decided to give them all a try! The orange came up okay, the "rock-lemon" didn't really want to play along, but I still managed to scrimp a bit of rind off it. 

Finally came the lime.

If you could believe this, smelling was perhaps even better than tasting one. The pungent, fresh, sweet and ever-so-slightly spicy aroma was literally visible. Intoxicating droplets burst into the air from the first scrape.

With such a promising start, I hope this google advice proves effective. If not, at least I will have made the precious discovery of another small wonder of the sensory world.