lemons

Sherry Braised Chicken Thighs with Meyer Lemons and Green Olives

April 12, 2011

One of the questions people frequently ask me is ”do you cook every night?” The short answer is “no” but what I really want to say is ”define cook.” We certainly don’t eat out every night and even when I don’t cook a full meal, there’s almost always something to forage from the refrigerator rather than eat fast food. Sometimes dinner is a mixture of home cooked and store bought. And speaking of fast food, while I haven’t eaten anything from a large chain fast food place in over 2 years, we often go to our local Vietnamese, Thai and Mexican places which dish up a pretty darn fast bun cha, tom kha gai, or burrito mojado. That’s my idea of fast food now.

When I do cook dinner at home, it’s often something quick because, like many people, I work a full time job with a long commute. The last thing I want …

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Meyer Lemon Pudding Cakes

February 7, 2011

Sometimes recipes come from the strangest, most unexpected places. They can come from a flash of creativity connected to absolutely nothing, they can be inspired by eating something amazing or even by a location, they can be passed down from generation to generation or given like a secret gift from friend to friend. The recipe for this lemon pudding cake came to me from of all places, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Only in our digital age would it have found its way to me as it did.

In the Fall of 2009 I sent out a tweet, asking for lemon dessert recipes. Robyn Eckhardt, a professional travel/food writer who also writes one of my favorite blogs Eating Asia replied, asking if I’d ever made Lemon Pudding Cake. I said no and she emailed me a scanned page from an cookbook called Classic Home Desserts, one I can only presume made its way …

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Getting Ready to Garden & Meyer Lemon Giveaway

March 21, 2010

Weekends like this remind me how truly blessed those of us are who live in Southern California. Say what you will about traffic or smog, you really can’t beat the weather. It was almost 80 degrees on the first day of Spring, while many parts of the country were still under a blanket of snow. It almost makes a girl feel a little guilty to have so much sunshine and year-round citrus.

We’ve had some unusually wet and cold weather this year, but once it turned warm the urge to get outside and plant came on with a vengeance. Even though it’s early March, it’s time to get the summer garden going here in Los Angeles. While many people in the US can’t plant until May or June, we need to start planting now because in July and August, at least where I live, it’s so blazin’ hot the vegetables can’t take it and start to wilt on the …

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Meyer Lemon Lavender Cake

March 13, 2010

A couple of weeks ago my mother was cleaning out a box of stuff in her office and came across a bunch of old recipes. In the middle of it was a 5×8 note card with a recipe for “Old Fashioned Lemon Bread,” handwritten by yours truly.

The letter started, “Dear Mom, I just made this and liked it so much I had to send you the recipe.” It ended with, “You are required to make this as soon as possible.” I was college student living in an apartment and starting to cook more on my own. On the front side of the card I had decoupaged a selection of phrases cut from magazines including “Hot Stuff” and Highway Mileage May be lower” and the Surgeon General’s warning about smoking. God knows what I was thinking. No matter, the cake was fantastic and once I saw the recipe again, I …

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Glazed Meyer Lemon and Poppy Seed Cookies

January 23, 2010

I’ve come to the realization that prolific citrus trees are like summer zucchini; you find yourself using them in every dish possible and then leaving sacks of them on your neighbor’s doorsteps in the middle of the night. I’m not saying I did this, but I know someone who has….

We have an gnarled old Meyer lemon tree in our back yard which is about as wide as it is tall, and considering that it’s shorter than I am, could almost qualify as a “Meyer bush” if such things existed.
For the first few years we lived here we got sporadic lemons and thought that the tree might have been so old it was dying. Then, a couple of years ago I gave it some citrus food and extra water and suddenly the lemon angels were singing “hallelujah!” and we had a tree which while still stubby, was now heavily laden with the kind of sweet-tart lemons for which Meyer …

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Blueberry Lemon Curd Tart

June 26, 2009

Very rarely do I go out and buy food with the express intent to make something specific. Rather, I’m usually inspired by something I see at the market or by the desire to use something already in my ‘fridge, freezer or pantry.

Last weekend, when planning my “Girl’s Night” baking party, I wanted to make something for dessert. My mother had gone away on a long business trip and like I always do, I raided her refrigerator, taking home all the perishables, including a large, unopened container of fresh blueberries.

As the week progressed I pondered what to do with the blueberries. Muffins? Nah, no time. I thought about making ice cream, but that meant I’d have to go to the store for cream and who wants to do that?
If I don’t have to get out of my slippers I’m a happy girl.
Hmmmmm…what else could I make with what was …

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