If you are like most people, you are finding yourself making more meals at home than ever before, maybe even up to three meals a day. Well, I have a wonderful herb salt you can make, store in the refrigerator and use on beef, pork, chicken, fish, eggs, and vegetables. Basically, it is wonderful on just about everything.

Fresh Italian Herb Salt

• 7 sprigs fresh rosemary
• 3 sprigs fresh sage
• 5 sprigs fresh thyme
• Zest of 1 lemon
• 2 garlic cloves, peeled and smashed
• 3/4 cup Kosher Salt

Most people don’t know that the Paloma, not the Margarita, is Mexico’s most beloved cocktail. 

A classic Paloma uses grapefruit juice and tequila. Since I had a bowl full of blood oranges from my tree that wasn’t getting any better with age, if you know what I mean, I decided to use the blood orange juice in place of the grapefruit juice in the classic Paloma. I also infused fresh thyme in simple syrup and lemon juice I had leftover from this cocktail. Oh, and they call them blood oranges for nothing. After I finished cutting and squeezing all my oranges, it looked like a bloody scene on my cutting board!

If you want to make this in the near future, Trader Joe’s has bags of blood oranges right now. When fresh blood oranges aren’t in season, TJ’s also sells Villa Italia Blood Orange Soda and Grapefruit Soda. Using these flavored sodas is a great shortcut in place of the fresh juice.

I picked my first artichokes of the season today! Plus another 40 or 50 pounds of lemons! Really, someday, I will have picked that lemon tree clean… but not for a while. Only two artichokes were ready, so this recipe is for two, it can easily be doubled or tripled, no matter how many more artichokes you add.  But only go up to 1 1/2 cups of water to cook them in and no more than about 5 tablespoons olive oil.  When increasing recipes, know that not all ingredients increase in equal increments.  For instance, even if you double or triple the onion/garlic/thyme/fennel portions, you still will only need about 1 tablespoon of olive oil to sauté them in… that make sense?

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