Day 19: I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream for Mush

Oops, I did it again. I was so excited to eat my Mediterranean quiche I forgot to take a picture. I realized this with about three bites left.


After breakfast I took Leo on an epic walk that included toddlers, playgrounds, pull-ups and construction zones. Next I had to run errands in Herkimer, and figured I might as well bring Zoe along and give the community college nature trails another go. I chugged some milk, harnessed the dog and off we went.

We did not get lost, in fact I found the turn I missed on our last adventure and we ran a 8:10 mile on the winding, grassy trails. All in all we covered about 3 and 1/2 miles, and found more mud than pricker bushes.


Although we ran faster and farther than last time, I didn't manage to thoroughly exhaust Zoe.


I needed to get the ice cream started before lunch and I needed to shower before I started the ice cream, but I was too hungry to wait that long, so I prepared my favorite snack: sliced tomatoes with smoked swiss cheese. This time I used one of the nice orange heirloom tomatoes I got from the farmers' market. I also had another glass of milk.


Oh, and editor's note: yesterday I said that the farmers' market offered tomatoes in every color of the rainbow except for blue, indigo, and violet. But, there are some purplish tomatoes available. Also, have you ever wondered what it means when produce is referred to as an heirloom variety? Well, heirlooms are formed through open pollination by insects, birds, wind, etc. rather than self-pollination. This leads to more variety. Also, they've generally been around more than 50 years or even passed down via seeds through several generations of a family.

Maybe because it's Friday, maybe because it's my last truly free Friday for a long time, or maybe because I had such a nice run I decided to try my Fly Creek hard cider - it was pretty good. I didn't know what to expect because the last time I had hard cider it was Magners at a bar in Syracuse and it tasted like cigarette butts and regular butts. It may have been from an old tap, or maybe Magners just can't compete with what Fly Creek is throwing down, but I was pleasantly surprised.


I started making my ice cream. The recipe called for eggs, milk, sugar, cream, and vanilla. I decided I wanted to make raspberry ice cream so I substituted raspberries for the cream and honey and maple sugar for the regular sugar. I thought I was on the track to success when I achieved the thick, runny-pudding consistency the recipe called for.


Next step, put this mess in the pre-frozen ice cream maker for 20-40 minutes.


I left it in for over an hour, and it was still runny. Maybe I hadn't frozen the base of the ice cream maker long enough, maybe my substitutions funked up the works. And if you own an ice cream maker and you think that paddle moves slow enough that you can stick a spoon in and get a sample while its spinning, you may get away with it once, but not twice.


Either way I poured it into a container and stuck it in the freezer, but not before I sampled a few spoonfuls. It was good! Kind of like a cold custard or smoothie. I'm definitely trying this again with chocolate and peanut butter in September.

For dinner I had some cornbread and peach salsa.


And a couple hours later, even though I knew it wasn't frozen, I had to try my raspberry ice cream.


Only the top and sides had frozen and the texture was more reminiscent of a sorbet than actual ice cream, but I'm pretty easy to please these days and I declare this project a success.