for the love of a lemon

So, I've thought about starting a blog for a long time. Part of the problem is that, frankly, I suck at taking pictures and since as written above am insanely disorganized, always forget to photograph my food. I am fairly impulsive, and thus cook whatever I feel like when I want it, and by the time it's hot, no time to wait, change the light, position the food. No, damnit! I want to eat it right then and there. I also never write anything down. I just kind of chop, throw, pour and grate whatever I find in the fridge/pantry into a pot, and out comes dinner.

Fortunately, and very excitingly, I got engaged to a wonderfully patient and nothing like me at all (well that's not quite true, but he harbors very few of my bad qualities) man a few weeks ago. And, as a modern women, I thought it would only be fair to reciprocate the wonderful gift of a diamond and emerald 3 stone ring with a lovely Canon SLR camera. Since fiance is very good with lighting, heck he invents lightbulbs, and very calm and dutiful, I have asked him to photograph the food that I make, not only as a catalog of our love and life together, since the kitchen is a large part of our relationship, but also, perhaps, so that I could more obsessively talk about myself into the black hole of the internet.

Thus, I leave you with my first post, the love of the lemon, since it is the most beautiful picture he has taken yet and give you an outline of ideas of delicious lemony recipes for our lovely citrus season.

When I lived in Chile for a year, I was amazed at the wonderful salads they had there. They were so simple. One vegetable, shredded into a bowl, with immense amounts of lemon juice, salt and vegetable oil. The grace and freshness of the vegetables was beautiful.

Idea #1: Carrot salad
Take 2 carrots (or however many you have in your fridge) and shred them finely into a large bowl. Take the juice of 1 lemon, or 2, again however many you have and squeeze this into the large bowl. Salt liberally, at least a teaspoon or 2 of kosher salt. Add 2-3 tablespoons of vegetable or olive oil. Mix. Refrigerate for a couple of hours to let the flavors marry, or if you didn't plan ahead, don't worry! Just eat it now.

Iterations of carrot salad
Make it Latin style:

• instead of lemon, add lime (or keep the lemon, they eat lemons south of the border)
• add a generous amount of cilantro
• add some green onions, chopped up (or chives, or red onion, or whatever)
• add a clove of freshly chopped garlic

Make it Asian style

• keep the lemon, or substitute for rice wine vinegar (unseasoned)
• add some toasted sesame seeds, black, or white, or both
• add some chopped up green onions (as above)
• instead of salt, add soy sauce (just don't sauce too liberally otherwise your salad will be salty brown)
• instead of veggie oil, add half sesame/half veggie oil...delicious!

Ok. Seems as though I have to go save some lives at the pediatric emergency department. haha, I mean, give kids tylenol, and if they are actually sick, run the other direction looking for a real doctor.

Thank you for the first installment of...OB cookie!