Hot and Sunny = Ice Cream Weather

Today felt like summer - in the "wait a minute, what happened to spring?" kind of way. So, over lunch I pulled out my ice cream bible and made an ice cream base to freeze at dinner time.  I had some lemon juice leftover from making lemon sorbet last weekend, and had been planning on making the Lemon Buttermilk Sherbet from the same book, but...When push came to shove, the minimal amount of cooking required for that recipe made the Super Lemon ice cream seem more attractive. (That, and, while I like the idea of a buttermilk-based sherbet, it takes a little mental 'working-up-to' that I just didn't have.) So, here we are. Still no Lemon Buttermilk, but with a truly Super Lemon Ice Cream that's delicious and super EASY to boot.

Just a note: I really love custard-based ice creams for their rich, creamy mouthfeel, but there are some lazy days that I just can't get myself excited about the cooking part. I always feel a little stress over whether today's going to be the day I scramble my custard, and some days the worry isn't worth it.  That's when I love recipes like this one and the Peanut Butter Ice Cream in the same book...stick it in the blender for a few seconds, and you're done.  Perfect.

Back to the how-to, pretty much straight from The Perfect Scoop:
Zest 2 clean lemon straight into your blender. Add 1/2 C sugar and blend until zest is very finely chopped. Then add 1/2 C lemon juice (freshly squeezed, of course) and blend until the sugar is dissolved. Finally, add 2 C half-and-half and a pinch of salt, blend one more time, and then refrigerate for at least an hour, or until you're ready to freeze. Easy-peasy!

I served mine with some strawberries that I chopped up and macerated with a bit of sugar while we ate dinner. I really liked the bit of sweet strawberries as a counterpoint to the rather tart ice cream.

I think this would be really good swirled together with Raspberry Sorbet, or maybe with graham cracker crust and whipped cream (or marshmallow sauce?) swirled in and then topped with the strawberries (ice cream pie, anyone?) Also, I'm thinking I'm going to try this in a decadent strawberry shortcake at some point this summer. Yup...an easy, yummy ice cream with lots of potential variations. Lovely.

New Year's Eve in review

Yes, it's the end of January, and I'm just now getting around to posting my New Year's Eve recipes.  We had a fun party at our house with several families who have kids around the same ages as ours. The first part of the evening was a family dinner complete with Minute to Win It games for the kiddos, and then at around 9, we put the kids down upstairs in a mock slumber party.

Our menu:
Jalapeno Cheddar crackers
Pomegranate Cosmopolitans
Chili
One-bowl Chocolate Cupcakes with
Magnolia Buttercream Frosting


The Jalapeno Cheddar crackers were the first recipe I had tried from my new Christmas book (from Q, of course!), Barefoot Contessa Foolproof.  They are very similar in concept to her Parmesan Thyme crackers, so I whipped them up on Christmas afternoon and put them in the freezer. Then all I had to do the day of the party was thaw, slice, and bake them.  They really are delicious.

2 C all-purpose flour
1 tsp kosher salt
1/8 tsp baking powder
14 TBSP cold unsalted butter, cut in 1/2 inch dice
5 oz extra-sharp white cheddar (Costco, bay-bee!)
1 TBSP minced jalapeno pepper (seeds and ribs removed)
1/4 tsp chili powder (I used ancho, but she called for chipotle)
3 TBSP ice water

Place the first 3 ingredients in the food processor, fitted with the steel blade, and pulse to combine.  Add the butter and pulse until the mixture resembles coarse meal.  The add the cheese, jalapeno, and chili poder and pulse again. With the food processor running, add the ice water all at once.  Continue pulsing until the mixture begins to come together in a ball. Place a sheet of plastic wrap on a cutting board, dump the dough out, and roll into a log about 14 inches long.  I find that the plastic wrap actually helps me form the log and smoosh all the dough together (technical term). At this point, I froze the log.

Then, when we came back from Iowa the day before the party, I moved the dough log from the freezer to the fridge. All I had to do the morning of the party was slice them about 3/8 of an inch thick, place them on a cookie sheet covered with parchment paper, brush with egg wash (1 egg beaten with 1 TBSP milk), sprinkle with salt (I just had kosher salt, but the recipe called for fleur de sel or sea salt), and bake at 400 degrees for 12 to 15 minutes.

Yum. I love having something for guests to munch on when they arrive, and it's a bonus if it's something easy that doesn't add to the "30 minutes before they get here!" rush. Check, and check.

That's it for now. Stay tuned for the chili recipe...that's worth coming back for.

Cloudette/Duck!Rabbit! Art Project

So, I'm sure you're wondering what it was that we did with our white paint and blue paper last week.

What we had planned to do...or what we actually did?

As you might know if you have preschoolers, the art is more about the process than the product.  I had planned to create our own Duck!Rabbit! ambiguous art masterpieces and have lively debate about what they were....but what we ended up doing was making our own Cloudettes.

Actually, they both ended up completely covering the paper in white paint. Q called it his "fog picture." They had a great time, it just wasn't exactly what I had envisioned. (When is anything, ever?)

Now, if you wanted to end up with more of a "product" experience, I would make the following modifications:

• Get older kids. :) I think 5 and 3 is on the lower end of the age range for this to be effective
• Try it with white construction paper instead of paint - better shape definition and control
• I also thought about doing it like Rorschach blots - making colorful paint blobs on paper, folding it in half, and then seeing what the kids thought it looked like.

But still, we had fun. Lots of fun.



How's your reading coming? We checked out Shark vs. Train, What Are You So Grumpy About?, and What's Up With This Room? on Saturday. Q is, of course, in love with Shark vs. Train. Genius idea for a book.

I may have to rethink our plan for this week, as it will be hard to get them as excited about Goodnight, Goodnight Construction Site as they are about the shiny new library books.

Timeline and Random Fun

 Today is a home day for us (meaning: no preschool/daycare/work), so we were able to have some fun with our Tom Lichtenfeld author study.

The kids woke up to a message from Cloudette on the kitchen chalkboard. I'm not quite sure how I'm going to incorporate the chalkboard into our study, but I'm thinking we will use it to list the books we read and keep track of specific attributes.  Stay tuned on that one...














For breakfast, we made Cloudette and Rabbit pancakes.

I say "Rabbit" pancakes, because Q and R are most definitely "Rabbit" people, as it turns out. 

 

Speaking of which, have you taken the quiz yet?  If you haven't, go do that now, and then come back here and leave a comment telling whether you're a "Duck" or a "Rabbit" person. 

 

After breakfast, when Porter went down for nap, we made a timeline of the TL books we currently have.  We learned how to find the copyright page and the copyright date; then, we wrote the copyright date for each book on a sticky note and put it on the cover.  We used the sticky notes to help us put the books in the right order on our timeline.  We also added sticky notes for the years that Q, R, and P were born, just for comparison.

 



Making the timeline helped us learn a few things about TL:

• Q was born before most of the TL we are reading were published
• R was born in the same year that Duck!Rabbit! was published (2009)
• P was born in the same year that our two favorite TL books were published (2011)
• In most of TL books, the copyright page is at the end of the book, rather than at the beginning 

 

 We will probably revisit the timeline activity once some of the books we have reserved at the library become available.

 

After nap, we're heading out to get some supplies for Friday's art project. If you want to do it with us, here's what you'll need:

• blue construction paper
• white paint
• black crayon or black marker
• other colors of construction paper (optional)

Can you guess what we're going to be doing?

Happy reading!

Tom Lichtenheld author study

Q and R and I have been enjoying some of Tom Lichtenheld's books for a while now, and last week it occurred to me that he would be a great author to "study." I borrow the term loosely from my (long-past) tenure as a first-grade teacher to say, "We are going to check out a bunch of this guy's books from the library, and really get to know him."

The choice of Tom Lichtenheld was entirely organic -

The "kids" gave me Cloudette for Mother's Day because we had had it checked out from the library for at least 9 weeks running....

And Goodnight, Goodnight Construction Site was a natural favorite for Q, who has been able to name all the working trucks since he was two....

-- but as it turns out, he makes a terrific introductory author to study for a few other reasons:

• Sometimes he's the author & illustrator, sometimes just the illustrator
• He has a distinct illustration style
• His books are funny, and the kids love 'em
• They appeal to both genders
• He talks a lot about his work on his website: tomlichtenheld.com, which links to his blog and to pages of downloadable, book-specific resources

I'm going to be posting about some of our activities here, so that, hopefully, some of you with kiddos of similar ages (mine are 5 and 3 right now....we're leaving P-man out of this) can join in. So, feel free to play along, discuss books through the comments, vote on your favorites, etc.  It's going to be fun!

To get things started, we made a trip to the library and checked out as many books as we could.  I put some others on hold (so we could make sure to get the ones we really want), but I also wanted the kids to have the hunter-gatherer opportunity.

I've decided that the author study will formally last 3 weeks. Each week we will have a focus book (or two) that we will use to anchor our major activities (like art projects, mini-books, etc.), while still enjoying our remaining "inventory" more spontaneously.

My proposed schedule is:
Week 1 - Duck!Rabbit!, and probably Cloudette as well



Week 2 - Goodnight, Goodnight Construction Site

Week 3 - Shark vs. Train

Just so you're tracking with me, I'm not necessarily trying to do a multi-disciplinary unit with each major book (which you might think from perusing the available activity guides).  I am planning to do an art or writing project with each book, because I think that will help my kids appreciate the perspective of the author.  On the other hand, if we don't make a little cloud in a bottle when we read Cloudette, that's not gonna kill me.

Last piece of business for today - mark your calendars for Friday night, September 7.  We'll do a Tom Lichtenheld party for those of you who are local. It'll probably involve a lot of Shark vs. Train, as that will be our book for the week, but it will incorporate elements from lots of the books.

Automate with a Vengeance

One really dynamic speaker at a conference I was at last week used the phrase "automate with a vengeance" to describe one of the principles that would/should/could revolutionize healthcare. 

And I thought, of course, "That's it!" That's what I'm trying to do with my home/kid/life-management.  I'm trying to get the routine things down to being really routine...if I know they're coming up every day, why do I manage them like they're a big surprise?  Also, I've been spending a lot of time trying to systematize some of the things I'd like to be more routine but really aren't (like doing thoughtful things for friends).

Basically, this is all about getting the things that can be automated to take up less time in my life so that I can focus on the things that are really important to me.  I want to make conscious choices about how I spend my time, whether that's doing an art project with Q, or baking fresh bread, or just sitting on the couch with my husband to watch a movie.  I find it's easier to make those choices when my conscious thought processes aren't taken up with, "Do I have anything to make for dinner?"

Automate with a vengeance... and then move on to the fun stuff.