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).

Cheese sauce saves the day

After yesterday’s “fowl up”, I was a little nervous to step back into the kitchen today and at a loss as to what to make for dinner. Lunch was easy: a great big salad full of veggies from the farmer’s market and chicken from last night. However, I had no clear idea of what to make for dinner; my farmer’s market haul is starting to get a little low and I’m not super experienced in the kitchen. So I spent a little bit of time googling, looked through my fridge and pantry and tried to channel my mother’s inventiveness (no matter what we had on hand, she always managed to make something work).

Finally, I found a basic cheese sauce recipe that called for butter (check), flour (check), heavy cream (check) and havarti (nope, but I do have Mountaineer, an “alpine-style cow’s milk cheese” from a dairy in Virginia – that will work). I used the last of my store bought pasta, asparagus, bacon and chicken breast to make a pretty yummy pasta dish. Paired with a glass of chenin blanc (I thought it was from VA, but just realized it’s from California… Oops – I invoke the drinking exception) it was quite tasty.

I also got started on some homemade mint chocolate chip ice cream. A good friend was kind enough to let me borrow her ice cream maker, so I started the process by heating up some heavy cream, whole milk and sugar with a big bunch of fresh mint from our yard. I’m letting it sit in the fridge until tomorrow to really infuse it with mint flavor. Looks good so far, I’m pretty excited!!