Oh, San Francisco, why such the tease? You blessed us with weeks of warm and sunny days; lulled us all into complacency, leaving little doubt that the sun would shine as brightly the next day, and then out of the blue, no more. Gone are those blissful spring days spent lounging in the park, sipping on a beer, wearing naught but the lightest sundress and an oversized chapeau. The sun beating on my bare back, I almost believed that this year would be different, that the summer months would stretch forth with the promise of days spent frolicking along the beach, or sipping cocktails by the grill, but no! Every year, like clockwork, you break my heart; cool winds come snapping through the trees, and I return to my tights and sweaters, balled up in a drawer and forgotten, only to be sprung forth as spring ends.
Pardon me if I sound like a crotchety old woman*, but it just blows my mind how kids today will grow up in a world where high-speed internet, DVRs, smartphones, iPads, and the like are more or less the norm. It’s funny to think that just a decade and a half ago, cell phones were a rare luxury, and if you had one it was far clunkier than most cordless landline phones are today** (think Zach Morris brick phone).
*In case you’re wondering, I’m just shy of my 24th birthday (it’s this Saturday!!), hardly advanced of age.
**Sidenote: how many of you even have a landline today? We have one because it came bundled with the cable and internet, but have yet to plug in an actual phone.
In what can only be explained as a temporary bout of madness, Andrew and I spent the last week on a juice cleanse/detox. I’ve never been one for extreme measures; generally speaking I don’t diet, pull all-nighters, or have strongly polarized religious or political views, but rather choose moderation as my default position. And yet, swayed by Andrew’s enthusiasm, and the promise of glasses filled to the brim with juicy nectar, I spent six days feeding our new kitchen beast all the fruits and vegetables it could devour.
Sometimes I feel like I should change the name of this blog to I LoveSmittenKitchen.com; more often than not, the recipes there are inspiring, well written, and above all delicious. So it’s little surprise that many of the recipes I’ve written about here came to me via Deb. Most of her recipes are near perfect written as is, so I’ll only make minor tweaks, but sometimes I just can’t leave well enough alone.
Citrus season in the US has always seemed a little bit bizarre to me. Many of the desserts and beverages I associate most with summer are laden with the juice and zest of these winter beauties: lemon bars, key lime pie, lemonade, and margaritas, to name a few. Perhaps it’s nature’s reminder during the dreariest days of winter that the sun will once again shine bright, and warm the earth with it’s generous rays. Though it likely has more to do with the physiology of citrus plants and their fruiting cycle, ever the optimist, I tend to lean towards whimsy and romance, and therefore choose to think in terms of the former explanation.
