It’s citrus season, which means a couple of things around here. One, any pretension of even halfass locavorism goes out the window. I’ll take all the citrus California, Texas and Florida can manage, please, for as long as they’ll ship it up to me. Two, I start going crazy making lemon curd, salt-preserved lemons and limoncello. (I also…
Citrus
What Makes A Cocktail A Sour?
Many of the cocktails I share here are subtle variations on a theme. That theme has a name: The Sour. Ignore, for now, drinks with “sour” in the name like The Whiskey Sour or The Pisco Sour. While these drinks are in fact sours, not all sours announce themselves so obviously.
7 Simple, Delicious Ways To Use Lemon Peel
I am such a sucker for citrus. If I didn’t hate temperatures over 73 degrees I’d move someplace where I could have my own huge lemon tree in the backyard and spend all day figuring out ways to use bushels of lemons. As it is, I have to buy my citrus, so I try to get as…
Ultra-light Limoncello
We’ve got a few more weeks of prime citrus season. We’ve already made lemon curd, salted lemons and citrus cleaning spray. It’s party time. Let’s make limoncello! A traditional southern Italian digestif, limoncello is usually served ice cold from tiny little glasses. Traditional limoncello often manages to be both too bitter and too sweet for…
The Bloody Valentine
Fifteen years ago, my now-husband and I went out for our first Valentine’s Day date. We went to a nearly-empty pub, sat down for a beer, and within 10 minutes some drunk guy we’d never met had twisted his barstool around started describing the sordid details of his ongoing, bitter divorce. We were young, and West-coast raised…
Chocolate Mint Mojito
Mint isn’t just mint. There’s peppermint, spearmint, ginger mint, apple mint, pineapple mint, chocolate mint, lime mint and on and on. (Anyone ever seen Best in Show? Yeah, varieties of mint are kinda like the “I can name all the nuts” scene.) Different mints have different levels of super potent compounds that give them their…
Tamarind Tequila Rita
Right, I know. Tequila. You’re saying to yourself, “I don’t drink tequila. See, there was this one time in college and all I remember is I woke up on that grassy patch in front of the Mechanical Engineering building when the sprinkler started and hit me in the face and somehow my underwear was on…
The Hemingway Daiquiri
Ernest Hemingway is one of my father’s favorite authors. I grew up surrounded by The Old Man And The Sea, The Sun Also Rises and For Whom The Bell Tolls (about that last one – don’t ask). My favorite Hemingway piece has always been The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber. Or maybe A Clean,…
The Gin & Ginger Cocktail
If one were really, truly stretching the definition of healthy, one might consider this cocktail medicinal. Fresh citrus combines with raw muddled ginger root, a bit of botanically infused gin and bitters and just enough sweetness to help the delicious medicine go down. The result is a bit spicy, a bit lip-tingly and undeniably delicious:…
The Marmalade Old Fashioned
Inspiration, Part One I picked up a bin of what I thought was “chicken scraps” from my local yuppie-hippie market a few weeks ago and found myself in possession of a lot of free organic citrus. Since my chickens don’t eat citrus, and since I hate food waste, I made marmalade. My dad used to…
Toxin Free DIY Citrus Cleaner
As you may have noticed by my Meyer lemon obsession, it’s citrus season, and I couldn’t be happier. As I’ve mentioned before, any pretense of locavore principles goes out the door for a case of mandarin oranges or a perfect, juicy grapefruit. While I’m paying the karmic debt for the food miles it takes to…
Gluten Free Cake That Actually Tastes Awesome
We had a lovely couple over to dinner for the first time a few days ago and the lady of the pair kept to a gluten free diet (and has for like 17 years, so you know it’s not a passing thing). I know what you’re saying: “Hey, I know someone who is gluten free!”…