Strawberry fields forever.

So this past weekend my Mom came up for a visit for Mother's day. On her way she stopped at a strawberry stand on the side of the road and picked up a GALLON of strawberries. My friends, that's a lot of strawberries. But it was ok because they were GOOD strawberries! Delicious, dark red, juicy, flavorful strawberries. Not anything like those bitter, whiteish, sad imposters you find at Kroger.

Farm fresh strawberries.

(this was after we raided the basket to make ice cream and jam)

Between eating the strawberries as they were, we made Strawberry Sour Cream Ice Cream, which is AWESOME. I've never been a fan of strawberry ice cream but this stuff is good. I think I even liked it best before we froze it. Before freezing it was the best strawberry milkshake ever!This was definitely the easiest batch of ice cream to make too. Macerate the berries in a tablespoon of vodka and 3/4 of a sugar for about an hour. Throw it in a blender with a cup of sour cream and a cup of cream and blend away! That's it!


(see those seeds? that's strawberry ice cream made with actual strawberries! i wish the photo could actually capture how pink this stuff really is. it's very, very pink!)


We also made a metric crap ton (ok, 9 cups, but seriously, i'll never get through all of that!) of strawberry freezer jam. We just followed the instructions for jam that came with the pectin box. It was super simple, boil some sugar, slice some strawberries (we threw them into the food processor) then mix together.



This stuff is really tasty and I'll definitely be making more toast and biscuits for breakfast so I can gobble it all up. But I imagine I'll be sharing with lucky friends and family too. If they ask nicely.

Ice Cream Part 4

Ice cream step by step. Sort of. Well, not really but there are multiple pictures. There are 3 things that make Tin Roof Ice Cream.

Vanilla ice cream.



Chocolate covered peanuts. Chopped into pieces.



And fudge ripple.



I completely spazzed out and forgot to take a picture of the ice cream once it was combined but just imagine that it was beautiful and delicious. Because it was. The fudge ripple was AMAZING. So chocolaty and so delicious. I won't lie, I ate a few spoonfuls of it by itself before pouring it onto the ice cream. And then a few spoonfuls after of what was left. In fact there's still some in the fridge and when I need a sudden chocolate fix I have a spoon. It's just that damn good.

We shared this ice cream with Kevin's parents when they came down for the weekend. They both really enjoyed it. His Dad even said it was one of the best desserts he's ever had. So yay! Other people enjoy my ice cream! I'd still rank this one below the white chocolate and butterscotch pecan, but it was definitely better than the chocolate. I definitely wouldn't mind making it again though. Maybe once I make may way through the rest of the Perfect Scoop.

Ice cream part 3

It's a double whammy tonight! Two posts! In one night! Because I'm a total slacker!



For our third batch of ice cream Kev and I decided to go with something chocolaty. The recipe was for a Guinness Milk Chocolate ice cream but this turned out to be a Baltic Porter Chocolate ice cream. The Baltic Porter was one of Kevin's home brews and I used semi-sweet chocolate rather than milk chocolate. You could definitely pick up the beer in the ice cream and it was very intensely chocolate even though I used one ounce less chocolate than the recipe called for since that's all that I had on hand.

It was delicious, of course. But I think this one ranks at #3 behind the butterscotch pecan and white chocolate ice creams. The base for a batch of tin roof is chillin' in the fridge now. That's vanilla ice cream with fudge ripple and chocolate covered peanuts. My fudge ripple is cooling now and I'll make the peanuts tomorrow. It's a bit more labor intensive with the add ins but it's for a special occassion. Kev's parents are coming into town this weekend. Hopefully they'll like it!

Adventures in Ice Cream Part 2

Kevin and I took the ice cream maker for a spin this weekend and made our 2nd batch of home made ice cream.  This batch would've been considerably less expensive than the white chocolate ice cream if it hadn't been for the burnt butter pecans. The instructions weren't great for making those and Kev over toasted them in the oven at 350 for 10 minutes. He never toasted nuts before so wasn't aware that they need constant vigilance and coddling otherwise they go from golden brown and delicious to burnt in about 2.5 seconds. So we wound up spending like $12 on nuts for one batch of ice cream. Ouch. At least we have some left so I can make more of those tasty spicy pecans from Macheesmo. Wait, what was I talking about? Oh yeah, ice cream.

It's butterscotchbrandy pecan ice cream. (We didn't have any scotch.) It's rich, buttery and almost a little savory. Definitely a little salty, but I like that. Not quite as smooth and creamy as the white chocolate ice cream, but it's still really darn delicious. Kevin certainly doesn't have any complaints.  Next up on the list will definitely be a chocolate ice cream. There's no way home made chocolate ice cream won't be twice as delicious as this.

Happy Valentine's Day

Kev and I like to stay in on Valentine's Day. We don't like to fight with crowds or waits or pay a lot of money for fancy dinners so we stay in and cook up something nice. It's usually just as good as what we'd get at a restaurant and much, much cheaper (plus! leftovers!)

This year was no exception.

We had brandied mushrooms, parmasean broccoli gratin, new york strip steaks and Moroccan olive bread. Dessert was homemade white chocolate ice cream on brownies.



As you can see, Macheesmo has become one of my new favorite food blogs to follow. I've tried several of his recipes (including these nuts for the super bowl and OMG they were like crack). His blog was the first place I looked when trying to come up with sides to go along with our steak that were outside of the usual baked potato/roasted veggie box that we reside in.

My mushrooms didn't come out the same lovely brown color that his did but they were still quite delicious.


The broccoli gratin came out very nice look indeed, but just because it has broccoli in it don't let it fool you. It's not very healthy at all with whole milk and heavy cream and plenty of cheese in it.



Kevin grilled the steaks beautifully to a lovely medium rare. Seasoned simply with salt, pepper, little bit of lawrey's and some bbq sauce on mine. Just awesome!

But by far the most delicious part of the meal was the ice cream. Kevin got me the ice cream attachment for my kitchen aid mixer and this was my first spin with it. I decided on a white chocolate ice cream from the recipe book he got to go with the ice cream maker. It was simple, it was delicious and I'm convinced that my diet is just absolutely blown to pieces now.



We ate it right after it was done mixing so it was the consistency of soft serve. That was alright though, once we got a taste of it (Kevin licked the mixer blade clean!) there was no chance we would wait long enough to let it set up.  It was rich and creamy and I'm pretty sure there's no chance of me going back to store bought unless I'm just feeling exceptionally lazy.

So that was my happy Valentine's Day. I can't wait for the next special occasion so I can make more tasty ice cream!