i read that lemons aren't naturally occurring, but are produced by breeding a bitter orange with a citron. so, life never gave us lemons, we made them ourselves. are opportunities like that? do we make our own opportunities, like how we made the lemons? or are opportunities random? should we make and take opportunities? or if they are randomly given to us, is it bad to not take them?
it seems easy enough to re-write the cliche starting with the actual ingredients you mentioned, and resulting in lemons. the only problem is, the cliche no longer has the repetition of 'lemon', so it might be a less catchy sentence. but more accurate. another solution would be to re-write it to involve another actual case where a naturally occuring ingredient can be used to make something else with a similar name. the meaning of the cliche remains authentic, that you can make something out of what has been given to you. although now, thinking it through, i've suddenly realized that the original saying actually still works fine, regardless of whether lemons were originally man-made or not