Kiwi Ice Cream

Tuesday was a pretty laid back day. There are things I should have done, but I didn't feel much pressure to do them. I have the best boyfriend/fiance (getting married in less than 2 weeks!) who actually encourages me to sleep in a be lazy. What a guy.

This is what spring looks like.

Fancy wanted ribs for dinner, and since we had a bottle of barbeque sauce (where did that come from?) hanging around, I decided to toss them in the crock pot. I sliced an onion and layered it at the bottom and set the ribs on that. Covered them in the barbeque sauce, and set it to low. It's been about 4 hours, and they already smell great.

I wanted to do a couple of veggie sides to go with it. Our local grocery store had asparagus on sale, so that's one of them. I'm also thinking spinach for the bitter taste to balance out the sweet sauce on the ribs. I picked up an Italian bread while I was out as well. Dinner is done? Well, that was easy.

Since I had some extra time I decided to make something out of kiwi since it's Fancy's favorite fruit. I toyed with the idea of a kiwi gelatin, but in the end went with a kiwi ice cream. I cooked down four peeled kiwi fruits and mashed them into a puree. I added about a tablespoon of St. Germain liqueur. It's a liqueur made from elderflowers. It's floral and lovely and just right.

After adding the kiwi puree to the sweet cream base of the ice cream, I decided it wasn't "kiwi" enough. So i mashed up two more kiwi (total of 6 now) and added them to the mix.

While doing this, I sipped on a beer. I've loved everything I've had from Founders, but this one is probably my favorite right now.

It's a very well balanced beer. I love hoppy beers, but they're my favorite when they're balanced with some malt. This was a winner.

The ice cream turned out really well. Even after being in the freezer for a day it didn't really get super hard. It eats more like a soft serve. This could be due to the uncooked Kiwi, or the alcohol. I'm not sure which. In the summer, maybe I'll try it again.

It's officially spring, but you'd never know it here in WNY. How about some snow and ice cream pictures?

Kiwi Ice Cream

6 Kiwi fruit
1 Tbs St Germain Liqueur (optional, but oh so good!)
2 Eggs
1 Cup of Sugar
2 Cups of Heavy Cream

Peel and slice kiwi and put in a medium sauce pan with a lid.*
Add a little water (2 Tbs or so) and cook them until they are soft.
Mash or blend and allow to cool completely.
Add the St Germain Liqueur and stir to blend.

*Remember, I only cooked 4 of them. Play around to get the flavor and texture you want.

Whisk the eggs in a mixing bowl until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes.
Whisk in the sugar until completely blended, about 2 minutes more.
Add the cream and whisk until blended and sugar is dissolved, about 4 minutes
Stir in the kiwi puree.

Add this to your ice cream maker and follow the manufacturer's instructions.

Makes about 1 quart.

Leftovers with garlic shrimp and soft boiled egg

Just a brief post about how good the leftover Quinoa salad was from last night.
Read about the health benefits of Quinoa here.

I jazzed it up by adding a soft boiled egg, and some garlic shrimp.
The whole thing took about ten minutes!
This was a perfect meal after a very involving day at work.

Blood Orange Quinoa Salad with Soft Boiled Egg and Garlic Shrimp

Fancy has a grad class tonight which means a few hours to myself.
My plan tonight is to catch up on some magazines that I've falling behind on.
Exciting, I know.

I also plan on watching some bad television or a movie while sipping a nice bourbon.
I'm starting with Hoarding: Buried Alive, transitioning to Skyfall (I may be a bit obsessed with this movie currently.) while sipping on Elmer T. Lee bourbon.

The Elmer T Lee has a bit more bite (higher alcohol content, and you can feel it) and warmth than a lot of the whiskeys I've been drinking. It has the caramel and vanilla that a lot of bourbon drinkers like with a bit of spice and some butter to it as well. Read someone's professional review here.

Since Hoarding was too gross to watch, and I do have such a guilty pleasure for action movies that I went straight to Skyfall.

Elmer T. Lee Bourbon

Notice the lack of ice? Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. People get pretty snooty about these kinds of things. I think you should just drink what you like, the way you like. If it's summer and I'll be drinking it quickly, I've been known to add an ice cube. Generally I'll add two drops of water to help bring out the oils and scents. Again, this is just a peculiarity of mine. Tonight I added nothing!

I feel a little guilty drinking bourbon since it's so close to St. Patrick's day. I do so love Irish Whiskey (there's a bottle of Red Breast 15 year sitting on the shelf next to the bourbon) for it's cleaner taste, but the extra warmth and complexity of a bourbon sounded perfect for magazines and movies.

I think Fancy is a pretty lucky guy. He has a pretty girl who loves to cook, drink bourbon and loathes romantic comedies. Yep. He's a lucky guy.

Enough blogging and on with my evening!

Garlic Shrimp

15-20 medium shrimp
1 tbs butter
1 clove of garlic
juice from half a lemon

Peel and devein shrimp.
(I prefer the small to medium for most dishes. I like them to be bite sized)
Melt 1 tbs of butter in a medium sauce pan.
Add garlic and saute until garlic is fragrant (about 2 minutes)
Add shrimp and toss until cooked. (about 5 minutes) 
Remove from heat.
Squeeze lemon over the top and toss to coat.

Soft boiled egg

Bring a small pot of water to a boil.
Add the egg to boiling water.
Boil for 6 minutes.
Remove from heat and immediately immerse in cold water.
Peel egg and serve immediately.

Spring Cleaning Part 2 (and dinner!)

The first thing I did when I got up this morning was to check on those bagged stove top grates. I was so excited like it was Christmas morning! The ammonia trick did not disappoint! I gave the grates a quick scrub down with a green scrubby and rinsed them off. That was it! Sparkling clean!

The oven was another story. The ammonia bowl seemed to have no effect. I'm tired of that oven, so I'm taking a break from cleaning it. It's not technically spring, so I do have some time for the "spring cleaning" craze.

Bing!

Next I cleaned out the fridge and cleaned the mold off of the seal. It's an old refrigerator, and doesn't seal well which means moisture and mold. It's amazing what an old toothbrush and a little bleach can do!

After

Before

After

Before

Feeling inspired by the contents of the fridge, I decided to make a nice dinner using mostly what strange things I have on hand. I did go to the grocery store and couldn't help but buy a little piece of spring.
I love hyacinths. I could smell them in the store before I bought them.
Plus, look at that color! It's hovering around our dining room window with my other plants. You can see my jade and the adorable chipmunk ornament from Roost that was just too cute to put away with the other Christmas decorations.

To set the mood, I played the new Tame Impala album that Fancy picked up for me from Spiral Scratch this past weekend. I've been wanting this album since it came out, but it was sold out every time I went to buy it.

I pulled some center cut pork chops from the freezer that I'd been saving for a fun meal. I bought them from a local farm called T Meadow Farms where they raise them. It's kind of like eating someone's pet.
I decided to use some cherry preserves we had hanging around (Fancy likes grape jelly over anything other kind) and the remains of a bottle of cabernet to make a cherry cabernet sauce to go over the chops. I made enough to use on the ramshackle dessert for the evening.

A bit of a mess (on my nice clean stove-top!), but it turned out well.

 To go with the chops, I made a quinoa salad and some sauteed kale with garlic.

I seasoned the pork chops with Penzey's pork chop seasoning. I'm a bit obsessed with that store. Perhaps you noticed the seemingly endless row of their spices hanging out in the background of some of my pictures.

Since one of their stores opened locally, I haven't bought spices any where else. The prices are comparable to what you'd find in a grocery store, and the quality is outstanding.

I went out a limb here for dessert. I took the essentials of cheesecake, but without the measuring and worry.
This is what I love about ramekins. Even if it's soft, it's still delicious.

Cherry Cabernet Sauce

1 12oz jar of cherry preserves

1 cup cabernet wine

Stir together in a medium saucepan.

Boil until reduced and thickened (about 30 minutes)

Quinoa Salad with Blood Oranges

1 cup Quinoa

Half of a red onion, chopped

1/2 cup parsley, chopped

2 cloves of garlic, minced

2 blood oranges, peeled, segmented and halved

1 tbs olive oil

1 tbs aged balsamic vinegar

Cook Quinoa according to package directions (basically 2 cups water for every 1 cup Quinoa)

Set aside to cool.

Saute onion and garlic in olive oil until onion is tender. About 10 minutes.

Remove from heat and add parsley, oranges, and vinegar.

Stir gently to combine.

Toss together in a large bowl with cooled Quinoa.

 

Kale with garlic

1 bunch of Kale, stalks removed and chopped.
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 tbs butter
1 tsp red pepper flakes

Heat butter in large skillet. Add garlic and kale.
Saute until kale is tender, about 10 minutes.
Add red pepper flakes and toss to coat.

Mock cheesecake with sour cream and lemon juice

1 8oz package of cream cheese or neufchatel cheese, softened

1 cup sour cream

1/2 cup sugar

2 tbs lemon juice (or juice from one lemon)

3 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

Combine cream cheese and sour cream in a bowl.

Add sugar and beat to combine.

Add lemon juice and vanilla.

Add eggs all at once and beat until combined.

Grease 4 ramekins

Divide batter equally between the ramekins.

Bake at 350 for 45 minutes.

Top with cherry cabernet sauce.

This was delicious, but a fail as far as appearances go. When cool, they deflated and looked even worse, but then there's more room for topping!

Spring Cleaning Part 1.

This is probably going to be a long and boring post, but I'll put in a lot of pictures!

Yesterday was the first day in months that it was above 40.
I think we hit a high of 63. Not only was it warm, but it was SUNNY! Since it was warmer outside than it was inside, we had the windows open, and I confess that I got a little spring fever.

This is a bad idea to get so early in Upstate New York especially since looking at the forecast it's supposed to drop back down into the 30's in a few days.

I live in an apartment for now, which means not much outdoor work to speak of, so I'll concentrate this spring fever into spring cleaning.

Fancy (fiance sounds so pretentious) is at work today, and I'm off so I have an ambitious list of things to do today.

Of course I have to go to the store first to get a few things that I'll need. I should also plan out dinner before I go so that I don't have to make two trips...but that probably won't happen. Does anyone else do this? Three trips to the grocery store in one day? Luckily it's only about half a mile away, and I don't have children. Otherwise I doubt I could afford that luxury.

Before leaving, I put a load of ignorables in the laundry (Shower curtain, mattress pad, etc.) and used this tip from Make It Do to spring clean my mattress. Below is my picture, but the strainer I used must have holes that are too large. The baking soda mix just fell straight through onto the mattress. I shook it around a little, and used the strainer to pat the mattress to help distribute.

I also febreezed our pillows. They can't be washed, but they are the most comfortable pillows ever. It's like sleeping on a cloud. I've had mind for about two years and it is just as comfortable as when I first got it.

The next project was deep cleaning the oven and the grates on the stove. This is an apartment oven, meaning it came with the apartment and so it has decades of people (college aged boys lived here before us) abusing it. I found this idea online for how to do it with less effort. I'll post the before picture, and tomorrow (if all goes as planned) the after!

Cleaning the oven did not go quite as well. I wanted to do a more natural clean (vinegar/baking soda) but the grease was pretty baked on and after several frustrating attempts, I broke down and used an oven cleaner.

That also did not go well. I didn't read the directions on the can which instructs you to preheat the oven to 200 degrees before spraying. Since I had already sprayed it down, I just turned it to 200 and went to eat my lunch. I forgot about it until the smoke alarms went off and the kitchen was filled with smokey fumes. Ugh. Thank goodness it's a warm day. With the windows open and ceiling fan on, it cleared pretty quickly. So back to square one with the oven.

I decided to try ammonia. Since I'm using that on the grates of the stove, I'm hoping it does a good job on the oven. The bottle instructed to place a small dish or bowl of it in the oven overnight and simply wipe off in the morning. We'll see how it looks in the morning. So much for making dinner tonight. Thank goodness for Chinese.

I also washed my car! It started out as just squirting the salt off, but then I realized it just looked even worse. The salty water dried in streaks and left a striped look. So I grabbed a bucket with a squirt of soap in it, some drying rags and a washing rag. That was the fastest and most satisfying job of the day! 

I cleaned up our stairwell and shoe area. It's hard to see the difference in the before and after because these are well worn, paint splattered stairs. Again, it's an apartment, and while things like that really bother me I can't justify the time and effort it would take to make them perfect when we'll be leaving in less than a year.
I scrubbed them down, and polished the wood. Even if it doesn't look great, for today it smells clean at least.

Before

After

Before

After

 This is a really inexpensive shoe rack which you can see part of in the first "before" picture. It's not really designed for giant man shoes, but it works well enough to keep them off the floor and out of the entry way. We have another shoe rack which is in the back of the coat closet for things like snow boots and flip flops that we don't wear as often.

So at the end of the day, I got to cross off most things on my list. Of course I kept adding things to the list as the day went on too. Sometimes I add something just to be able to cross it off. Other people do that too, right?

I think I'll tackle the refrigerator tomorrow along with the rest of the stove/oven project.
Stay tuned for Spring Cleaning Part 2! 

Guacamole on Sunday Funday

Fancy and I were invited to my parents house for snacks and movie night.
Poor Fancy was sick, and spent the morning and most of the afternoon in bed.
While he was out, I cleaned and made an Irish Soda bread (using his Grandmother's famous recipe) for St Patrick's Day.

Originally I had planned to just bring a bag of chips to the snack-fest at Dad's. I just wasn't sure how ambitious I would be.
I decided to make some easy guacamole since I discovered that I had all of the ingredients.
(I've been on an avocado kick lately, generally making an egg stuffed baked avocado, but that post is for another day.)

There aren't many recipes that are easier to do than guacamole.

You only need a few basic ingredients.
I only had one Haas avocado, so I made a small batch.
You can chop things by hand, or toss it all in any food processor.
I use the Ninja because I'm a sucker for infomercials, and it actually is a good chopper!
One ripe tomato (Roma is my favorite, but alas I only had a "vine ripened" basic tomato) quartered.

 I used about 1/3 of a medium sized yellow onion, but you can use more if you're a big onion fan.

Add some chopped garlic, I used about 1 teaspoon for my small batch.

Cut the lime in half and juice in directly into the chopper.

Cut the avocado in half and scoop it into the chopper. Really clean out all of that avocadoey goodness from the peal.

Add salt and pepper to taste, and blend up!

See how easy? What did that take...5 minutes?


At this point I took a little tangent to set up my avocado pit in some water.
It never works for me, but I always try. Now that we're bordering on spring here in Upstate New York, I feel optimistic about it this time.

 You'll want to wash any leftover avocado off of the seed before putting it to set in the water.
Otherwise it gets moldy...first hand knowledge here.

 I really scrubbed it well this time. I didn't use soap, because I didn't know if that would do a bad thing to the seed. Take some toothpicks. Three works well, though the last time I tried this I ended up having to use 4 because I didn't stagger them well and the pit kept flipping upside down!

You'll want to use a shallow bowl, or cup. In my case I'm using a gnarly old teacup that never gets any love.
Set the pit suspended over the cup of water with the base of the seed (the flatter part) in the water and the top (more pointed part) in the air.

Then place it in a sunny location! This is about the sunniest in my apartment. My plants spend the winter clinging to life clustered around one window that gets "some" sun. Fancy and I plan on buying a house once we're married and hopefully I'll have a few places I can put them.

Supposedly it takes about 8 weeks for the seed to sprout, and in that time you'll need to add water, and change it out if it gets gross. My mother is a science teacher and gets pretty upset at this whole avocado thing. Neither of us have any luck growing them this way which makes her wonder how they propagate in the wild? Surely they don't need toothpicks and a cup of water. Do they have to be in a puddle? I'm sure the internet has the answer, but speculation is more fun.

*Side note. The guacamole was a dud at the snack party. I forget sometimes that I have a family of picky eaters. I was the only one who "likes" guacamole, though I did convince a few to try it and they said it was ok. This still did not entice them to actually eat any. I'll just eat the rest for breakfast!