Our weeping cherry tree is blossoming right now, and it’s been a lot of fun to work in the garden lately. I planted a sorbet peony among other things, and the hydrangea I burned with fertilizer late last year is making a really nice come back. Pretty soon it’ll be real BBQ season (I lovely 76 degree day here today, but so unexpected it’s hard to get a BBQ group going) and we’ll be spending a lot of time back there.

I haven’t planted spring crops yet, but it’s on the to-do list. The chard from last summer is still producing nicely, as is the arugula. The leeks I planted a few months ago aren’t doing well; I think they’ve been too cold at night and too wet during the day and so they never quite spanned out and are still slim and clumped together. The other containers, for the most part, are resting right now. The kale missed its chance when it was attacked by caterpillars at its prime, and I’ll probably uproot it soon. The thyme is still doing well, and I ought to use it more often.

Anyone having luck with other crops in SF?

A very lovely coworker surprised me a few days ago with a gigantic bag of meyer lemons from a family tree in Napa. I sent about 1/3rd of them to my mom, used several in smoothies (which are not so blog worthy and are certainly very ugly looking with all the chard and other hippie hoo-da I’ve been drinking up, thus, the blog has been rather neglected lately for my newfound need to eat more vegetables in very boring forms), and the rest are either in these lemon bars or waiting to be devoured in the coming days.

This recipe is only slightly modified from David Lebovitz’s Whole Lemon Bars recipe, with my notes and adjustments below. My favorite frequent visitor to Paris (who has on several occasions rubbed shoulders with Mr. Labovitz at certain company events!)  is coming for dinner Sunday and I imagine I’ll find some new, delightful way to use the lemons in our meal. You, reader, can look forward to that!

I did make these by weight and recommend you do the same if possible.

Crust
1 C flour (140g)
1/4 C sugar (50g)
1 stick butter, melted (113-115g)
1/2 tsp vanilla

Topping
2.5 small organic meyer lemons
3/4 C sugar (150g)
3 large eggs
4 tsp corn starch
1/4 tsp salt
3 T melted butter (45g)

Powdered sugar for top

Oven to 350–line a 8×8 inch pan in foil as smoothly as possible, matte side of the foil touching the bars/filling. Get the foil crisply into the corners.

Mix the flour, 1/4C sugar, 1/4 tsp salt, stick melted butter and vanilla until just smoothly combined. Distribute the dough into the bottom of the pan evenly using hands or a spatula.  Bake for 25 minutes until golden brown.

While crust is cooking, cut lemons in half and remove seeds. In a blender (I used my wonderful vitamix, but if you have a regular blender you may want to chop the lemons a bit), pulverize two lemons and the juice of 1/2 a lemon with the sugar until mostly smooth, a few chunks are good. Add the eggs, corn starch, salt and the rest of the butter, blending until smooth.

Pour the lemon topping onto the crust when it’s done cooking, reduce the heat to 300 and return the dish to the oven for 25 more minutes, or until it stops jiggling and is set.

Remove from oven, let it cool COMPLETELY before messing with it, then cut with a very heavy sharp knife into squares! Consider topping with powdered sugar and serving with tea.

I recommend NOT leaving these in an air-tight container as I foudn it to make them go very soggy very quickly. Foil wrapped in bunches works much better, at least in SF climate!