use real butter

Recipe: peppermint ice cream

I can’t tell you how excited I was to finally try a peppermint ice cream recipe! I’ve been wanting to make peppermint ice cream ever since I left Ithaca, New York 5 years ago. Ithaca was where on occasion, I would buy Purity brand peppermint ice cream which wasn’t that crappy green stuff. It was real peppermint and pinkish and absolutely heavenly. I suppose peppermint ice cream to me is what Coffee Heath Bar Crunch is to Jeremy. But I was never much of a dairy expert and ice cream wasn’t high on my priority list of skills to accomplish. I don’t know why now, but I’m glad!

This recipe comes from David Lebovitz’ The Perfect Scoop. I actually found it on Elise’s terrific site here. I’ve had issues crushing peppermint candies in the past. My favorite peppermint candy is King Leo brand peppermint sticks, but they are so airy they would just dissolve in ice cream. I used those generic red and whites from the store. When I made peppermint bark in the past, there was a lot of swearing and harming of worktable surfaces. I wised up this time and remembered my seldom-used mortar and pestle.

Recipe: peach-raspberry galette

Peaches were on sale at the local Safeway when I passed through on Sunday. These aren’t the kind of peaches that are juicy and make a mess down your shirt when you bite into one, but they looked good enough for some fruity ideas.

Recipe: citrus cordial

If you shop like me, you try to eat something before you hit the store(s) and you try to shop responsibly. That means picking up foods that are both delicious and good for you as well as economically unstupid (economically stupid = picking up two heirloom tomatoes at Whole Foods and watching your partner’s eyes pop out of their head when they ring up to $8). I generally try to buy a lot of produce because it’s good for you. Those bags or flats of fruit from Costco are a great deal, except when you can’t consume them quickly enough before they spoil.

I hate to let good food rot for no good reason, but now my citrus doesn’t have to – ever. My dear friend, Kell, shared this brilliant idea with me several months back. It sucks that she’s all the way in Australia, but I love that we keep in touch electronically with all sorts of food ideas and other snarky observations about people, life, and politics. She’s amazing, and so is this cordial. I suppose cordial is a nice fancy British Commonwealth term for what we uncultured Yanks would call syrup *grins and exposes gap tooth*