Summertime Bloggin!

I've made it through another semester, and have moved another step towards my degree. In late April I flew back to defend my dissertation prospectus, and celebrated success in with a trip to Chicago the next day. Now that I am happily back home, I am looking forward to getting back to gardening and cooking and sewing and food blogging, and hope to finally post more often here.

We've built a couple of raised bed gardens, since we couldn't even grow tomatoes or chiles last summer. Here are our baby lettuces:

And I'm delighted that the test kitchen has just tried out the Vegan Coffee Ice Cream recipe from my new favorite foodie blog, Vegan Ice Cream Paradise. Even though our little Rival ice cream maker's motor just died on us, we hand-cranked it in between stuffing our faces with grilled Yves Good Dogs and corn on the cob. It was delicious, although next time we'll cut back on the sugar and vanilla (I think I put in a tablespoon instead of a teaspoon!), and perhaps use stronger coffee. Here's the recipe she has:

Vegan Coffee Ice Cream:

mix 1/4 c. Soy Milk with 2 Tb. arrowroot and set aside.

Combine
2 c. Soy Creamer
1 c. Soy Milk
3/4 c. sugar
3/4 c. strong fresh coffee
in a saucepan and bring to a boil then turn off the heat and stir in the arrowroot slurry. This will cause the mixture to thicken. Stir in 1 tsp. vanilla extract and let it cool. When it's cool, throw the mixture into your ice cream maker. We added some chopped chocolate covered espresso beans at the end of the freezing, and it really enhanced the coffee flavor as well as adding some yummy texture.

Better than Java Chip or Jamoca! Eat it!