When I was in third grade, two of my best friends and I pooled our meager resources, walked to the nearby grocery store and bought our teacher a little, flowering houseplant.

Sycophants, clearly, but I also think the teacher had suffered some sort of personal tragedy — I can’t remember what  — and we wanted to express our sympathy. Impressed with our purchase, we carried the plant back and set it on the floor of my friend’s bedroom.

You can probably see where this is going.

Later that afternoon, I accidentally stepped backward onto the plant, crushing our little gift and earning me the moniker “Squasher of Plants” for life.

In the decades since, I’ve dabbled with gardening a few times, growing herbs, tomatoes, strawberries and quite a lot of swiss chard, the latter of which I can’t recall actually planting, at least not on purpose. Some of those attempts have been more successful than others but, suffice it to say, I’m still known more for killing plants than for growing them. 

Having said all that, I’ve been raising a little, potted, Meyer lemon tree for about three years now. I think that’s the longest I’ve ever kept a plant alive, with the exception of the chrysanthemum a former neighbor gave us, which steadfastly refuses to die no matter how long I let it go without water in the midst of a Texas drought.

Fortunately for me, citrus trees don’t need to be watered very frequently.

I ended up with a bumper crop of lemons this year. I haven’t decided how to use all of them yet, but this lemon curd is so good that I might have to sacrifice a few more fruits for another batch.

This recipe comes from Michel Roux’s beautiful book, “Eggs.” It’s what I used for the filling in my molasses sandwich cookies, but it’s also nice dolloped on top of gingerbread, spread on toast or even spooned over vanilla ice cream.

Meyer lemons are sweeter than regular lemons and have a light, almost floral scent, but ordinary Eureka lemons will work too.

Although this curd uses just the juice and zest of the lemons, Meyer pith (the white part under the outer peel) isn’t bitter, meaning you can eat entire slices of the fruit. I especially like thin slices layered over pizza with ricotta cheese and arugula.

Do you have any other good uses for Meyer lemons?