Things we wait for…

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By Lisa

the weekend…

rain…

the first narcissus…

strawberries…

spring break…

longer days…

warm nights…

the outdoor patio…

leprechauns…

spring soccer…

panna cotta…

blossoming trees…

the butterfly ball…

spring lamb…

Easter morning…

Limoncello

California Limoncello

20 organic , just-picked emons

2 bottles (750 ml) 100-proof vodka or Everclear

4 cups sugar

5 cups water

Step One: Wash the lemons with a vegetable brush and hot water to remove any residue; pat the lemons dry. In a large glass jar (1-gallon jar), add one bottle of vodka.

Carefully zest the lemons with a zester or vegetable peeler so there is no white pith on the peel. Add the lemon zest to the vodka as it is zested. NOTE: Use only the outer part of the rind. The pith, the white part underneath the rind, is too bitter and would spoil your limoncello.

Cover the jar and let sit at room temperature for at least 10 days and up to 40 days in a cool dark place. The longer it rests, the better the taste will be. (You can shake or stir a little every few days, if you like.) As the limoncello sits, the vodka will slowly take on the flavor and rich yellow color of the lemon zest. When the color is no longer deepening and the rinds look whitish, it is definitely done.

Step Two: In a large saucepan, combine the sugar and water; cook until dissolved, or until thickened if you want a thicker, sweeter drink, approximately 5 to 7 minutes.

Let the syrup cool, then add it to the Limoncello mixture from Step One. Add the additional bottle of vodka. Allow to rest for another 10 to 40 days.

Step Three: After the rest period, strain the liquid through a cheese cloth or coffee filter and bottle: discard the lemon zest. Keep in the freezer until ready to serve.

Mountain Meals

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by Caroline

Every February, the boys have a week off school and we go to the snow. A few years ago, this meant packing a cooler full of breakfast and lunch foods we could fix during a skating-snow shoeing-sledding holiday in Yosemite. Last year, we rented a condo in Lake Tahoe, and discovered the importance of afternoon snack-craft projects.

Our snow vacation has never really been about the food, though this year that started to change a bit. We stayed in a different area in Lake Tahoe and had a great restaurant meal; in fact, for Ben, the highlight of the trip was not skiing blue runs nor taking the chair lift without any adult supervision, but the pasta dish the chef at Manzanita produced for him. And my own food highlight was our last lunch on the mountain, at a new spot with a salad bar and rice or noodle bowls topped with a nice vegetable curry.

Of course, after a full morning of skiing, everybody is hungry and nobody is picky. But it’s nice to feel our food options becoming a bit more expansive.

He Jumps

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By Lisa

Finn does not sit still. Not much.  Unless there is a pile of Lego in front of him, or a build-your-own remote control robot arm, or a book of 888 1/2 facts about the Titanic. Then, he is immoveable. But other times? He jumps, he squirms, he dances, he rolls, he hops. He runs, skates, and twirls. He giggles and climbs. He falls. He is all energy, all the time. He is my exuberant one, buoying the spirits of the house.

In his honor: Chicken Saltimbocca. It means jumps in your mouth. It jumped in his mouth.  He sat still. He ate.


Chicken Saltimbocca

  • 4 chicken cutlets, pounded very thin
  • 4 slices prosciutto
  • 4 sage leaves
  • Butter for frying
  1. Pound each chicken cutlet until it is very flat and thin.
  2. Cover each cutlet with one slice of prosciutto and one sage leaf. Fasten meat and sage to cutlet with a tootpick.
  3. In a heavy frying pan, melt 2-3 tables spoons of butter.
  4. When foaming subsides, cook chicken, prosciutto side down, until chicken is mostly cooked through and lightly browned. About 3 minutes.
  5. Turn chicken over and finish cooking. 1-2 minutes.
  6. Remove from pan and place on warm platter.
  7. Deglaze pan with wine and reduce by about half. Pour deglazing sauce over chicken & serve immediately.

Harvest Time

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By Lisa

We have an old orange tree, and its fruit sweetens late, but when it does, it’s miraculous:  sweet, cool sections like jewels; juice that seems the concentration of winter sun.  Growing up in the cold, snowy northeast, oranges and their juice came from exotic, far away places.  Now one of those places is my home, and it’s still strange to me.  For my kids, oranges are absolutely ordinary.  For them they, ahem, grow on trees. But for me, that tree is the stuff of imagination.

Now, the fruit is dropping nearly as fast we can harvest it, and it’s getting to be time to juice and zest and make arancello and orange polenta cakes.

Sunday, I asked Finn for help. I gave him a sack, and told him to climb.  He grabbed the bag and ran out the back door, then disappeared into the glossy leaves, hauling himself up and up until he was surrounded by the bright fruit. He filled his bag and climbed back down.

I think this is one of the things he’ll remember about growing up in California. The opposite of snow.

Key Lime Birthday Pie

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by Caroline

A couple weeks ago, Ben and I spotted some Key limes at the market and it occurred to me that he — a fan of all things citrus — might like Key lime pie for his birthday dessert. I have to admit I was also trying to manufacture a desire: I was going to be out of town at a conference the entire week before his birthday, and pie is a whole lot quicker to produce than a layer cake (like last year’s lemon extravaganza).

It worked. We researched recipes. We talked about meringue topping vs. whipped cream, crumb crust vs. pastry. We decided to use this Epicurious recipe as our starting point, with this almond crumb crust. I got home from the airport the night before his birthday, finally read the recipe closely enough, after dinner, to notice it wanted to chill overnight, and had the cooled pie in the fridge well before my jetlagged self collapsed into bed at 10.

The only very slight problem with the dessert is that the whipped cream doesn’t really support the sweet candle holders a friend made for Ben when he was a baby. They settled deeply into the cream while we sang, Ben blew out his candles, and then I fished them out before we all dug happily into our pie.

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