I don’t just love using oranges and lemons and limes. I love using ALL of them (okay, maybe sans the pith). It is sheer pride and all smiles when I use both the rind and the juice from one of my citrus friends. I feel so responsible, so deliberate in my optimization of the fruit; sure that using zest minimizes my contribution to overall waste. Every bit helps right?

Maybe it doesn’t help that much, but truth be told I think the zest and the juice are both equally essential in their kitchen contribution. It is just as much a shame not to use the zest, as it would be not to use the juice. When at my sister’s house over the holidays she said she had 12 ‘naked’ limes in her fridge. They had been zested for a lovely white chocolate mousse lime pie (recipe follows, attribution unknown). But their juice had nowhere to go. Enter myself and the Christmas Kazi. Those limes found a very happy home indeed. The juice “juiced us all.”

As for lemons, I make limoncella with 15 lemons a batch, using every scratch of zest I can find. Long, thick pithless strips of lemon zest marry vodka for 80 days to make a miracle apertif. In the summer I use all the juice to make from-scratch lemonade. If I don’t have immediate need for the lemon juice—applies to lime, orange, grapefruit, etc.—I put the juice in ice cube trays and freeze the Tablespoons of juice for later (think cocktail, salad dressing, less-brown fruit slices, coffee maker cleaning). Unfortunately, zest itself doesn’t keep well unless, of course, you candy it.

Then there are those lovely examples of using both the zest and juice together at once: in salads, with fish, for orange rolls, green beans and broccoli. I am sure there are many more great zest-and-juice ideas out there: I would love to hear them all!

White Chocolate Mousse Lime Pie
Crust
2 cups crushed ginger snaps
1 Tbsp. sugar
¼ cup chopped crystallized ginger
¼ cup melted butter
Filling
3 blocks cream cheese (room temperature)
1 cup sugar
Zest of 30 limes
12 oz. white chocolate, chopped
½ cup heavy cream
1 package Knox unflavored gelatin
6 T lime juice
2 cups heavy cream whipped with 1 tsp. sugar and 1 tsp. vanilla to soft peaks

Press crust mixture into spring form pan. Bake at 350^° for 8-10 minutes and cool. Melt white chocolate in microwave (30 seconds, stir like mad, 30 seconds, stir like mad). Once melted, mix in ½ cup heavy cream, cool slightly. Soften gelatin in lime juice, blend cream cheese, sugar, and lime zest in large bowl. Add gelatin to chocolate mixture. Add all this to cream cheese mixture. Fold in the two cups of whipped cream. Pour into cooled crust. Garnish with extra shaved white chocolate and refrigerate at least 4 hours or over night (better).

Note: establishing your ‘favorite’ juicer/reamer is essential to maximizing your citrus experience; take a few side by side to find your favorite… you might be surprised. I have tried the yellow and green press from William Sonoma, the wooden classic reamer, antique glass juicers and coveted more expensive juicers—though there is something nice about putting some muscle into it. My current favorite is the stainless steel version I bought at William Sonoma. It completely keeps out all those seeds—especially in an epic war with piles of lemons proud of seed-spitting when you least expect it. My least favorite was the William Sonoma yellow lever version: beautiful to look at but juice squirting everywhere but the intended bowl below (and it didn’t extract enough juice in my opinion). Find your favorite juicer and zester and have at it!

Lemony Green Beans are the perfect blend of citrus, olive oil and kosher salt. When I named them Lemony Green Beans all I could think of was Lemony Snicket, a children’s series that my son read some time ago. It is actually a bit ‘dark’ and tragic—not for all kids. These beans are far from dark and tragic; I would attach adjectives like smart, fresh and magic. They smartly cut through rich flavors of meat or pasta, provide a fresh tone to any meal and are a snap [aka magic] to make.

Lemony Green Beans
1-2 tsp kosher salt
1 LB green beans
1 medium lemon
1 1/2 T olive oil

Have kids snip off ends of green beans with a scissors. Boil salted water and cook beans 4-5 minutes. While beans are cooking, zest and juice lemon. Place lemon juice and olive oil in bowl. Drain and dry beans, add to bowl and toss with oil and lemon. Add zest and sprinkle with kosher salt (and pepper if desired). Serve immediately.

I have powdery, sugary, pecan embedded glorious butter ball cookies sitting on my windowsill. They look like a row of snowballs, blissfully unaware that they are resting, warm and moist, on the inside. Snowball cookies are a perfect treat for this time of year. Meant to melt in mouths, this sweet cookie delivers more than the snow that melted in my mouth as a child. I used to pour maple syrup over a pile of snow on a little plate, a silly treat and pre-cooking concoction that tickled my fancy. But snowball cookies are even better, heralding a confectionery melt-in-your-mouth experience.

Their cold, wintery cousins—bonafide icy outdoor snowballs—have a different fate than the cookie version. Both the indoor snowball cookies and the outdoor snow packed globes do have something in common: both provide a pile of pleasure for children and adults. Both beckon a heartfelt experience, something in the range of a smile to screeching laughter—a moment to savor.

This warm and sweet tribute to the snowball is a salute: to snowballs that provide hours of fun and laughter for children playing in the snow. Yes, these quintessential cookies are the essence of our inner children, standing with stubborn resolve in the face of challenge, yet with an all-out embrace of the amusing side of life. And might I add, it is so lovely to eat snowballs in their warm row, while watching my own children douse one another with flying, splatting orbs of icy packed snow—my moment to savor.

Snowball Cookies
1 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
2 1/4 cup flour
dash salt
3/4 cup finely chopped pecans
powdered sugar to coat cookies

Beat butter, sugar, vanilla for 3-5 minutes until light and fluffy. Add flour, salt until dough starts to come together. Add nuts and blend. Form golf ball size balls and bake at 400 for 12 minutes; roll warm cookies in confectioners sugar to coat. When cooled, roll in sugar again if desired.

Tis the season to cream butter and sugar, turn cocktails red and green, crunch candy canes for peppermint bark, and come up with foodie gifts like eggnog pound cake. I made 6 mini loaves with this recipe, then wrapped, ribboned and labeled them to spread around the eggnog love. You can freeze a few extra loaves and if you are [tip-of-the-hat] well organized, use extra pound cake for a seasonal trifle (use pound cake in place of ladyfingers or ‘cake layers’ used in most trifle recipes). I just tucked away a few loaves for a future Chocolate Rum Torte (coming soon to a blog near you).

I have had this recipe cut and pasted (the old way with a scissors and paper) into a 3 ring binder for years. I have no idea where it came from, but am grateful to have it. Someone else who was grateful? My 3 year old neighbor who, after last night’s dinner at our house, was given a token mini eggnog pound cake. I cannot contain a smile when I think of him licking—yes, licking—it all the way home (unabashed appreciation warms any cook’s heart; especially a 3 year old who estimates it is so good it should be licked). Here, the recipe for lickable eggnog pound cake:

Eggnog Pound Cake
1 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup shortening
3 cups sugar
6 eggs
3 cups flour
1 cup eggnog
1 cup coconut
1 tsp lemon extract
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp coconut extract

Cream butter, shortening and sugar. Add eggs and beat. Well. Mix after each, just to blend: 1 cup flour, 1/2 cup eggnog, 1 cup flour, 1/2 cup eggnog, 1 cup flour. Add coconut and extracts, stir just to blend. Pour into greased, floured 10 inch bundt or 6 mini loaf pans (for gifts or freeze some for later) and bake at 325 for 1 1/2 hours (I did 1 hour for the mini loaves).

Note: Feel free to omit the coconut flakes/shreds and extract; sub 1/2 tsp rum extract.

Another holiday, another charming cocktail. I consider it my duty to commemorate the season with a signature drink, my pleasure to add a festive ‘toast’ to Mixology Monday, and certainly my excuse to try some yummy new mixers. Equally important is my [self-appointed] job of providing my extended family with a novelty cocktail to usher in another year of holiday celebrating. This year may I present: the Christmas Kazi.

I have always been a big fan of colors: choosing a range of earthy colors and painting my house inside  (yellows, browns, greens) and out (think: avocado) was invigorating. In my elementary years I created earrings, friendship pins and even layered socks to coordinate with my attire (and that was when fluorescent sweatshirts were all the rage—yikes). So when I had the notion to come up with a holiday drink, this year meant inserting the cheery combination of red and green.

The green-sugared rim is Green Apple sugar I purchased from Williams Sonoma. Of course, my son was mortified (having just been through a nutrition unit at school) that it contained FD&C Blue #1 Lake and Yellow #5 dyes which are not natural and not healthy. Even the sparkling, organic cranberry juice I bought didn’t curb his concern. So if you want to stay ever-so healthy with this alcohol-centered drink by all means mortar organic raw sugar with mint or lime zest—or skip the sugar and put a pre-washed, lovely sprig of rosemary right into the drink. Yummy, still festive, and 4th grade approved.

I am proud to announce that instead of randomly pouring portions, I measured this little chalice of Christmas so you could re-create it indefinitely. Oh, and my husband and I drank our share last night to ensure they were blog-and-holiday worthy. We adored the Christmas concoction—so much so that post-holiday we may have to rename it so we can drink it year round. But for now, here is the so-named Christmas Kazi:

Christmas Kazi
2 oz. vodka
1 1/2 oz. triple sec
1/2 large lime, juiced
2 oz. sparkling cranberry juice

Serves 1. Which is never enough, so of course I double it. Use lime wedge to wet glass rim, dip in sugar. (Or cut and insert healthy rosemary sprig). Pour the sparkling cranberry juice directly into the martini glass. Mix vodka, triple sec and lime juice in cocktail shaker and shake to chill (or place in pint glass with lime halves and muddle). Fill glass and serve/drink.

Note: I bought the sparkling cranberry juice from Trader Joes, but you can buy this at most grocery stores; find it next to the sparkling apple cider.