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).

Strawberry Rhubarb Crumble

Its day 2 and my confidence continues to grow; I successfully made a strawberry rhubarb crumble and homemade whipped cream. I think I burned enough calories whipping the cream by hand to justify all the sugary goodness of the crumble. The recipe for the crumble can be found at http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Rhubarb-Strawberry-Crunch/Detail.aspx. I only had about 2 ½ cups of strawberries and even less rhubarb, so I made mine in an 8x8 baking dish and it worked quite well. It’s a little bit juicy when you cut into it, but I think it tastes great. The rhubarb is especially nice because its tanginess cuts the sweetness of the strawberries and crumble topping perfectly. As for the whipped cream, I just used 1 cup organic heavy cream and then added in a tablespoon of powdered sugar and a teaspoon of vanilla extract just before the peaks began to form.

Overall I’m finding it fairly easy to stick to eating local organic food and I haven’t purchased anything with more than four ingredients. Since the point of this whole experiment is to use what is close by, I have been using the non-organic/local ingredients that were already in my kitchen including pasta, bacon and raisin bran. Here is an outline of my meals yesterday and today (the asterisk indicates an item already in my pantry and the “o” is for things that are organic but NOT local):

Day 1

Breakfast: 3 scrambled eggs with green onion and tomato, homemade bread, strawberries, coffee(o) with half & half(o)
Lunch: whole wheat pasta* with bacon*, rainbow chard, tomatoes and parmesan*
Snack: 1 slice homemade bread with peanut butter* and strawberry jam*
Dinner: leftover lunch pasta
After dinner: several glasses of chardonnay which led to my abuse of the restaurant exception because I was hungry and sitting in Kevin’s restaurant waiting for him to finish his shift. I couldn’t drive home to get food, so I ate some Rueben eggrolls and spring rolls.

Day 2

Breakfast: raisin bran* and milk(o), coffee(o) with half & half(o)
Lunch: homemade bread sandwich with melted cheese from Mountaineer Meadow (a dairy in VA), lettuce, tomato and cucumber; salad with lettuce, tomato, cucumber and goat cheese from MD and balsamic vinaigrette*
Snack: strawberry rhubarb crumble with whipped cream!!

Also, I bought:
organic powdered sugar – 3.99
organic toasted oats – 2.89
organic heavy whipping cream – 3.19
cow cheese from VA – 12.39
goat cheese from MD – 13.99

With a .10 bag credit and tax my total was: $37.26