(Image courtesy of Cookbooks EtCetera)

Those of us with lemon trees know how difficult it can be to use up the fruit. A little lemon goes a long way, so keeping dozens of lemons from going to waste is a challenge. I was making some desserts and a lot of lemonade, but then I gave up and froze a bunch of the juice for later usage.

Then I came upon this fabulous article in the LATimes on 100 things to do with Meyer lemons. The type of lemons I have in my yard are Meyers–they are sweeter and juicier than other kinds of lemons because they are actually a lemon crossed with a tangerine. Some of writer Amy Scattergood’s suggestions of what to do with them are brilliant. Here are some I particularly liked:

* Make roasted Cornish game hens with Meyer lemons, olives and fennel (see recipe).

* Rub a Meyer lemon peel around the rim of a demitasse of espresso.

* If you don’t mind delayed gratification, make classic preserved lemons (different from chef Samuelsson’s because the lemons are preserved slowly over weeks instead of quickly blanched and cooked) by filling a Mason jar with quartered Meyer lemons, one-fourth cup of kosher salt and enough lemon juice to cover, and letting them sit in your refrigerator for three weeks. Or, for extra flavor, throw some spices into the jar too: a bay leaf, a cinnamon stick, some black peppercorns, a dried Thai chile, a cardamom pod.

* Arrange thin slices of Meyer lemons on a pizza crust topped with goat cheese, rosemary and Picholine olives.

* For a Meyer lemon confit, cook slices of lemons in olive oil over very low heat for an hour; coarsely chop, and add to a salad of market greens, goat cheese and candied walnuts.

* Make a crêpes suzette using Meyer lemons instead of oranges.

* Roast a whole mackerel with slices of Meyer lemons stuffed inside.

* Grate Meyer lemon peel into a bowlful of Chantilly cream.

* Throw a Meyer lemon for your dog to catch and play with; you’ll lose the lemon, but your dog’s breath will smell fantastic.

* For the perfect cold remedy, add the juice of half a Meyer lemon and a pinch of cayenne to a strong pot of tea.

* Make Meyer lemon vinaigrette with extra virgin olive oil, Meyer lemon juice, a splash of champagne vinegar, sea salt, cracked black pepper and a little lemon zest.

* Pan-fry slices of Meyer lemon with baby artichokes.

* Hollow out the interior of whole Meyer lemons, fill them with Meyer lemon ice cream, then freeze them.

* Slice a few Meyer lemons and put them into your bath with a sprinkle of lavender and rosemary

* Make Meyer lemon marmalade.

And finally…

* Open a Meyer lemonade stand on your street.

See the full list here.

I must have clothes on the brain, because here’s another post about them. This time it’s this simple tank top featured on Craft. I have several tank tops cut like this and they are pretty flattering. Not to mention, easy to sew. You can practically see how to sew this tank top just by looking at it. Luckily, you don’t have to go that far because there is a free pattern on the site that you can download. The shirt only takes 2 yards of lightweight fabric and is just in time for late spring and summer.

Going along with this post, where I talk about things you can do with old clothes, I came upon these old advertisements from London in World War II. They encouraged people to take their old clothes and turn them into something else.

Of course back then, everyone was too busy fighting to manufacture things like fabric, so people had to do what they could with what they had. Still, it’s fascinating to see people encouraged to reuse and recycle instead of consume and toss out.

The ads tell you to ad frills to your old dress by cutting up a worn baby’s dress, turn an old tennis shirt into ladies underwear, and to make pajamas into a blouse. Check them out here.

Not everything I do in the kitchen is perfect. I am philosophical about this–I figure it’s part of becoming a better cook. Learning from your mistakes and all that. I’m not sure if the following could really be called a mistake, but I sure wasn’t happy with it.

Last week, I made mozzarella for the first time. I used a very common recipe that is all. over. the Internet in different forms. It’s really easy. You heat the milk, add citric acid and liquid rennet, and let it sit until curds form. Then you drain all the whey out of the cheese and knead it like bread, occasionally zapping it in the microwave to force excess liquid out of it. (You can check out the recipe under the link for details.) It is very fast. Within a half hour, you have something that looks remarkably like mozzarella cheese:

It tasted good too. It had a distinctly mozzarella-like flavor. The texture was a little off, however. It was more compact than it should be, more like a giant cheese curd than stringy mozzarella.

But that was a small detail. I had made the cheese and was happy with it. I had spent about $3 on approximately 1 lb. of cheese, so it seemed like a good money saver. I was all set to call myself a cheese maker, and then I decided to try to melt my new mozzarella.

I knew there was a problem when I started to grate the cheese. Instead of looking like grated cheese, my mozzarella looked more like a grated eraser. Doubtfully, I sprinkled it on a homemade pizza and put it in the oven.

Have you ever tried to melt nonfat cheese? It doesn’t really melt. It sits on whatever you put it on and sort of browns and hardens instead of spreading like it’s supposed to. That is exactly what my mozzarella did, only it wasn’t nonfat. I tasted the pizza and it was gross. While I usually force myself to eat my failures, this was unpalatable. We had to throw the pizza out.

I was upset. What was wrong with my mozzarella? I figured there were two possibilities:

1. I did something wrong in the recipe. This isn’t too likely–I was painstakingly careful about the recipe, compared it to several other recipes on the web, and did everything to the finest detail. However, I could have not kneaded enough or microwaved too much or something along those lines.

2. My milk wasn’t good enough. I used homogenized whole milk from Costco. Maybe I needed raw milk? Fresh milk? I don’t know.

Then a third option came up. I asked my local food guru, a man who makes cheese and beer and wine. When I asked him what he thought went wrong, he said, “Did you use the 30 minute mozzarella recipe?”

I said I did. He nodded and explained that that was my problem–with the 30 minute recipe, the cheese doesn’t have time to form the delicate, soft proteins it takes to make cheese melt. What I needed to do, he said, was use a recipe where it takes four hours for the cheese to form. The proteins from that are softer and can melt better.

I am not 100 percent sure that the food guru was right, but it does explain why the cheese tasted good cold but didn’t melt. In the end, I might try mozzarella again to see if I can do better. One thing is for sure, I will be using a different recipe.

I’m not a big wallpaper person, but I do like old-timey wallpaper. There’s a huge Victorian down the street from me that was for sale once and I took a tour. Among other things, I was struck by the ivory star wallpaper from around 1910 on the walls. It was so elegant and finely made that it changed how I view wallpaper.

Since then, this has happened several other times to me–I would visit a historic home and be surprised how nice some wallpaper used to be. Of course, these were always the homes of the wealthy I was visiting–people who could afford to bring hand-painted wallpaper over from France and all–but that’s beside the point.

The point is that there are companies that specialize in reproducing historic wallpaper. For example, there’s Adelphi, which uses artisans to hand-reproduce original wallpapers for homes today. They carry wallpaper reproductions from 1750-1930. Here’s a few I liked:

1776 wallpaper circa 1790. It is “probably the first American design which features allegorical symbols. Like most architectural papers, it was probably hung in a hallway though it may have also been used in a parlor or bed chamber.” Here it is in a room:

I also liked Spiral Willow:

It is inspired by a French design circa 1920 and comes in yellow, pink, blue and the above ivory.

And also Viennese Trees:

From the 1920s, it “draws on the work and influence of the Wiener Werkstätte in Vienna and the French Moderne movement–later known as Art Deco.”

Adelphi has some pretty swell borders too. My favorite was Orbes Directoire:

It’s from 1810 and based on a border discovered lining the inside of a small box in upstate New York. With the right modern wallpaper, it could look amazing in a room.

Courtesy of Keeping Up With The Cohens

In researching houses for a separate project today, I came upon the Biltmore flower carpet, from the Biltmore Estate owned by the Vanderbilts. I had never thought of this obvious idea before–plant patches of flowers to make the larger pattern of a rug. It looks stunning both from far away and up close.

Courtesy of tdperry

But that’s nothing. Brussels has been making flower carpets every other year since 1976, all out of begonias. They make the Vanderbilt carpet look like my petunia patch.

That one is from 2004. You can see all the other Brussels’ flower carpets here.

Hmm… this would be a far better use for my front yard than my lawn…

I can’t look at this picture of this front porch without smiling. This is pretty close to my ideal front porch. It’s from a roundup of Southern porches by sfgirlbybay. My current house doesn’t have a front porch, but someday…

I also like this one:

Oprah had a pretty good Earth Day show yesterday. I particularly liked the part about using all reusable containers in your lunch. It saves you money since you don’t have to keep buying water bottles, sodas, plastic utensils, etc. According to the show:

By switching from using disposable items in your lunches to reusable ones, you could save as much as $320. You’ll reduce your waste too.

They featured several reusable options for the lunch, from lunch bags like this one to water bottles to little material sacks to hold your pretzels. (I’m not sure about that idea.)

One that particularly got my attention was stainless steel drinking straws:

I try to re-use drinking straws, but they get a little weird after going through the dishwasher, so I don’t like to give them to guests. It’s not that they aren’t clean, but you can see the water spots and wherever anyone bit on the straw, and it’s just a little funky to hand over to someone when you are pouring them a drink. Stainless steel straws seem like a good alternative to this problem.

The thing is, I’m not sure I would want to pay $12.99 got five of them. You would have to go through a lot of drinking straws to make that back. But it’s an intriguing idea, nevertheless.

Image courtesy of A Taste Of The Earth

I’m a little skeptical about this fad of hanging tomato plants upside down. I can certainly see the benefits. Tomatoes are vines and by hanging them upside down, you don’t have to worry about the tomatoes lying on the ground and rotting. Gravity works in your favor and you have easier access to the tomatoes. On top of that, you don’t need to worry about weeds.

The reason I’m skeptical is that tomato plants need a lot of nutrition and water. In a limited space like a bucket, by the time the plant is producing fruit, it seems like it would have used up the nutrients in the soil around its roots, forcing you to use chemical fertilizers. And it also seems like you would have to water more. Hanging plants seem to run out of water faster than others–at least, that’s my observation. Maybe it’s gravity?

So I’m a little unsure about this, but also curious. I admit, hanging tomatoes could be great for a container garden. In limited space I could see it being a good way to grow fresh tomatoes.

You can buy kits in the store to hang your tomato plant, but it seems like a matter of rigging a bucket on a rope, drilling some holes, and hanging it on a hook in direct sunlight. eHow has instructions on how to do it. From what I know of tomato plants, you would need a strong hook, because between the dirt and the water and the vines loaded with fruit, that plant is going to get very heavy.

So hanging tomatoes–good or bad? Anyone tried it?

I am shopping for floor lamps right now and I was surprised by how many floor lamps are inspired by nature. Here’s a few I liked. It’s probably worth noting that most of them don’t have a price, and that combined with my notoriously expensive taste probably puts them out of my reach, financially speaking. However, they are still pretty to look at.

Chrysalis Sky floor lamp from Weylandts

Leaf Lamp by designer Sofian Tallal.

Cloud Lamp designed by Frank O. Gehry. This is the only lamp with a price, around $1600.

Three Stone Lamp by Muleh.

Pear lamp by Nick Foley. This one is my favorite.