About Lemontine

Me in my apron with my very peeved cat, Troubadour

This blog can and will contain anything I fancy at the moment, from recipes to travel, photography to entertaining.

I once did one of those Dream Dinners things and had a hard time because everything was measured precisely and came from a tested recipe. I rarely measure anything, except when baking. Even then, if the recipe calls for something I like, I often add more.

To me cooking, and life for that matter, are best measured by taste, altering as you go.

I once read an article by a chef that said something like, “Always add more bacon, chocolate or cheese than the recipe calls for,” I couldn’t agree more.

When I was a kid, we were poor, so the food we had was cheap and often came in bulk. This is the source of a number of things:

  1. I am incredibly resourceful in the kitchen. I can make a meal out of anything and I am completely willing to combine ingredients in strange and curious ways. Waste not, want not.
  2. I can cook for lots of people, but not for two people. Growing up with 5 brothers  and two sisters, I was basically raised to be a line-cook, and there were never leftovers. Now, I have trouble scaling down, and prefer to cook for crowds, which is why I love our dinner parties.
  3. I learned the basics very early on. When all you have are the basics, beans, rice, whole veggies, grains and whatever was on sale for the deli, you learn how to chop quickly, work with raw ingredients instead of kits and mixes, and how long things take to cook. I only knew how to make chicken stock from scratch for the first 20 years of my life, it came from chicken soup, which came from chicken carcass and vegetables. I didn’t know what bouillon was, and for that matter, I still couldn’t name a single ingredient in it. Strawberry daiquiris are made from strawberries, margaritas are made with lime. Call me a purist, but everyone should know what’s in what they’re making.