Ben & Jerry's Revenge

For those of you who aren’t familiar with my “ground rules”, one of them is that I will not buy anything from a store that has more than four ingredients (to clarify, I’m not opposed to making something myself with 4+ ingredients). Therefore basic items like bread, salad dressing, ice cream, etc. must be homemade by me. Now I don’t want to lead you to believe that I eat a TON of ice cream, but I partake in a fair amount of Ben & Jerry’s (Super New York Fudge Chunk is my favorite followed closely by Strawberry Cheesecake). So perhaps the fact that my mint custard didn't freeze properly in the ice cream machine is some sort of retaliation by Ben and/or Jerry’s to my bold step away from their Vermonty goodness?

I realize that may be a pretty far-fetched scenario; but what is true is that something went awry with my ice cream making last night. I put the chilled custard into the frozen ice cream maker and let it churn… And churn and churn and churn. After nearly an hour in the machine (it’s supposed to take about 40 minutes) the custard was still runny. Kevin tried to thicken it by reheating the custard and adding another egg yolk, but after churning it again this morning nothing changed. I think we need a new recipe… Ben & Jerry: 1; Amanda & Kevin: 0

On the plus side, I put what I had into the freezer and it actually froze quite well; the consistency isn’t exactly correct (it’s a little bit icy) but it tastes really good. And that’s not the only tasty culinary outcome of the day, dinner was delicious: a turnip puree, grilled asparagus, and grilled lamb chops marinated in fresh mint, white wine, lemon juice and honey (http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Lemon-Honey-Lamb-Skewers/Detail.aspxx). The recipe is for lamb kabobs, but I just used the marinade portion and it was great. As a side note, we only marinated the chops for 3 hours because the lemon juice started to cook them.

For dessert? A loaf of chocolate strawberry bread that is amazing warm topped with butter. Find the perfect recipe at http://sweetpeaskitchen.com/ (scroll down, its past the lemon whoopee pie recipe).