blog birthday
[ blog birthday is a post from kara cooks. If you are reading it anywhere but in a feed reader, it has been scraped without my permission. The use of this feed or any kara cooks content on any other website is a violation of copyright. ] [ blog birthday is a post from kara cooks. If you are reading it anywhere but in a feed reader, it has been scraped without my permission. The use of this feed or any kara cooks content on any other website is a violation of copyright. ]

lemon juice
A few days ago a friend of mine returned from a trip to south Florida.  He was staying with another (mutual) friend who has a plethora of citrus trees on his property – everything from oranges to grapefruit to lemons.  Being the kind of guy he is (and also in hopes that I’d make lemon curd for the holidays), my local friend brought me two large boxes of lemons. Needless to say, my evenings have been spent zesting and juicing lemons like crazy.  But what do you do with nearly 30 lbs of lemon?  Well, make lemon tart, make preserved lemons, make the aforementioned lemon curd, make limoncello, and just pl

fried green tomatoes
I don’t know if it’s the blight that everyone has talked about, spreading this far south, or if it’s been the cool weather, or what, but my farmer’s market has had a plethora of green tomatoes lately. And actually that’s fine by me because I love the tangy tartness of a green tomato – fried, grilled, or chopped up in a quick relish. Being a Southerner by birth, though, I have to admit my very favorite way of eating green tomatoes is fried. I made this last night for dinner – it’s quick, easy, filling, and healthy.  It’s so easy I don’t even have a recipe for it … I just make it.

monday morning links #4
Another Monday morning links list … and an image from the archives, since I’m still without cameras and am likely to be for the foreseeable future. The image below is from one of my very first Tuesdays With Dorie postings. I still love the way the individual chocolate tart shells turned out. And here are the things that caught my eye from last week: Jamie’s Chicken w/ Lemon & Milk: I took a whole chicken out of the freezer this mornin

meatballs and sauce
As anyone who follows me on Twitter knows, I’ve been slightly obsessed with Gordon Ramsay lately. Thanks to hulu.com I’ve watched 2 seasons of Kitchen Nightmares back to back and I’ve caught up on the last season of Hell’s Kitchen and The F Word. On a previous season of Kitchen Nightmares, he gave a meatball recipe to one restaurant owner which turned into a huge success for them. Of course I immediately went on a search for the recipe online and found it. I made it the other night (with variations for what I had on hand)