spices; also, a standby.

among the few home-cooked dishes that i've made lately, i've been using lemon pepper seasoning a lot.

rather, i should call it "lemon salt-&-pepper."

if it were really just lemon flavoured pepper, then it couldn't possibly taste that deliciously salty.

still, i quite like it. the taste reminds me of a bite of chips and salsa (laced with lime) but without the tomato overload.

you could call it a poor man's lemongrass, i guess. q-:

---

in other news, i've been keeping a jar of sliced and spiced dried apricots, as a ready ingredient. i'll call them spiced apricot raisins.

• several handfuls of dried apricots, chopped into the size of raisins,
• garam masala and cardamon, to coat the apricot pieces.

that's it: just chop them after buying them from the store, coat them with tasty spice.

dried fruit is a great last-minute additive for morning oatmeal, stove-top or microwave. as for why it's worth mentioning this few minutes of prep .. think about the situation:

aesthetically, whole dried apricots seem too big to drop in oatmeal. a single one would fill up most of a spoonful of oatmeal, so you should really chop them.

oatmeal being a morning food, however, means that you're probably half-asleep when you want oatmeal, and are in no real mood to do any chopping. this means that you should chop them in advance.

dried apricots are still sticky in the middle. when chopped into pieces and left in a jar, they'll only clump together (and in a worse way than raisins, which still have their natural skin membranes). this means that you should include in them a non-clumping agent ..

.. and since apricots go well with spices, then why not some garam masala and cardamom?

in the end, they seem relatively versatile. if you end up cooking with these "spiced apricot raisins" for

• savory dinner dishes like risotto-like stews,
• muffins, by dropping them in like blueberries,
• toppings for yogurt or ice cream,

then let me know. i'll be curious how they come out.