Home Alone!

I don’t know if it is clear to my 14 readers but if I say “we” made something, it usually means that JustAwesome made it. We made this and we made that. JA made it. All. She’ll come up with the idea and I’ll say, “Yummy! Me like!” and that’s about the extent of it. Maybe I’ll do a little shopping or a little chopping. I almost always do the dishes. But make no mistake, I didn’t make it. I barely helped.

Today I am making ice cream. We make amazing ice cream. I’ve never made it before.

After a really good restaurant-week lunch at Esca on Friday, we saw some farmers selling their crops out of their truck. No Farmers Market affiliation. What do I care? I have no idea what farm they’re from, I assume it is local, not organic. Again, I don’t care. I bought peaches and plums.

A scorching hot Sunday with nowhere to go, I pulled out our second copy of The Perfect Scoop (the first we gave away). We have other ice cream books, JA swears that this is the only one worth owning. I linked to his page, not the book, because it is a great site—with some recipes and general Parisian yumminess.

The goal: Peach Ice Cream.

Weird things:

1. Peeling the peaches was incredibly simple because I scored the bottoms and blanched for 20 seconds. Peeling the peaches was really, really weird though. I felt like the guy from Silence of the Lambs who was making clothes out of skin. Blech.

2. Our world-traveling neighbor brought us some vanilla beans (from Madagascar?) which I held onto for too long. Rather than use vanilla extract, I decided to soak the dried beans and bring them back to life. A good idea? I don’t know yet. Instead of cooking the peaches in fresh water, I decided I should use the water that I soaked the beans in. Another stupid idea or genius? I don’t know yet.

rehydrating the beans. stupid or genius?

I’ll toss the remainder of the beans in my cinnamon-sugar mixture, which I use every morning in my coffee. Mmmm! Genius!

I’m pretty sure I over puréed this thing. Sigh.

I’m not sure why I take such risks on stuff I’ve never done before. Maybe if it’s gross, JA won’t make me help out anymore. With my dumb luck, it’ll be amazing.

Well, I’m heading out to the movies now. I’m not allowed to run the ice cream maker without a grown up anyway. I’ll let you know how it turns out.