Coconut milk fruity ice cream

We had a yummy food night. 

Dinner was homemade kale chips and peanut butter and fresh strawberries on Wegmans apple oat bread.

We're ending the night with homemade dairy free ice cream: vanilla coconut milk, fresh strawberries, the leftover fruit purée I froze after making quick pops last week, local raw honey, fresh raspberries, and chambord.

Pumpkin pie milkshake

I decided to make tonight a special family night. The child didn't get home tonight until 4:20, at which point we had to go pick up her father from work.

When we got home, he made rotini with red sauce, black olives and just a touch of shredded Parmesan while child did homework.

I made salads of an iceberg garden mix and sprinkled just a tad of shredded cabbage in and then some mandarin oranges with sesame-lemon-ginger dressing.

Then child headed up to the shower fatter which she brushed and I braided her wet hair and gave her a little facial. Her dad made milkshakes and we watched the original Buffy movie.

An awesome night made more awesome by these milkshakes:
- pumpkin ice cream
- Girl Scout shortbread cookies
- Archer Farms vanilla syrup
- cinnamon

Berry frozen yogurt

Took two bottles of smoogurt from Klein farm (one maple vanilla and one blueberry), added a splash of triple sec, and 1 cup of chopped berries to make this lovely frozen yogurt.

I let the kids (mine and her friend) smash and cut the berries with a potato masher and pastry blender.

Peanut butter banana frozen dessert

I cook with an eight and a half year old. This dessert has two ingredients:
Equal parts ripe bananas & peanut butter

I had one ripe banana in the freezer and an almost ripe banana on the counter. So we heated the ripe banana and combined it with the fresh one and mashed them with a potato masher.

Then we took the banana and the peanut butter and placed it all in the blender with just a splash of water to lubricate it.

It tasted how I remember the filling in a "funny bone" cupcake to taste.

We put it in the ice cream machine and since it took forever to get the sticky mess out of the blender we ended up with a thick layer that was just like peanut butter ripple in commercial ice cream and a creamier filling on top.

I got it all out and mixed it well before I transferred it to the freezer.

No sugar.
No dairy.
No soy.

Super Sweet dairy free ice cream

It's darn cold outside so of course I choose today to make ice cream.

In the ice cream maker I place:
- 1 1/2 cups very vanilla soy milk
- 1 cup vanilla almond milk
- 1/4 cup strawberry syrup imported from Beirut
- 1 teaspoon Bols blue curaçao liquor

(The preliminary tests indicate this is going to be WAY too sweet)

Sundaes for breakfast

Blame sour milk for this. My husband make Belgian waffles to use up some sour milk. So we made some mammoth sundaes. For breakfast.

But we put lots of fruit on them.

Purple Cow reopens

Last night our favorite ice cream shop had its spring reopening. So by 4 p.m. (after dismissal from school) my whole family headed to The Purple Cow Creamery where we stuffed ourselves with lots of ice cream.

And had no room for dinner. So dinner became rice with a touch of V8 broccoli soup as sauce and snow peas.

Sherbet shake

Mix:

- rainbow sherbet
- vanilla bean ice cream
- very vanilla soy milk

Refreshing!

Blueberry Pancake Sundae

A few weeks ago, my daughter and a friend had breakfast at her Grammy's and we got to bring home the leftovers: sausage, blueberry pancakes and wild blueberry sauce. I froze it all and took it out of the freezer yesterday so my husband and daughter could have it for dinner tonight.

Last night I got homemade pesto sauce with sunflower seeds out of the freezer and told my husband to make noodles, use the pesto, and top with diced tomato (the ONE of the three tomatoes my garden produced this year). That was really yummy.

When I got home from work tonight, I took one blueberry pancake, heated it, topped with vanilla bean ice cream (also a gift from the inlaws) and topped THAT with hot blueberry sauce.

Miam!

Brownies.... for dinner

Our entire family had a bad day yesterday, even down to the five-year-old who got yelled at by a substitute in her kindergarten class. So I warmed up some Duncan Hines brownies I had made for a last minute event wednesday night, topped with vanilla ice cream and dark-chocolate dusted almonds... and served for dinner.

Gayle's fundraising dinner

Last night was Gayle's fundraising dinner. She's walking in two fundraising/awareness events in October to benefit breast cancer research. One weekend she'll walk 40 miles in NYC and 60 miles in Philadelphia the next.

Last night she hosted her Italian dinner: real salad, rolls with garlic butter, cheesy shells, spaghetti with red sauce, spaghetti with meat sauce, sausage meatballs, and ziti with or without meat.

I manned the bake sale table. A difficult position for me.

I spent $54: $30 for our family to eat, $12 on raffle tickets for prizes, and $12 on baked goods. I won a $10 gift card for the Giant Supermarket. I brought home a pumpkin roll and put it in the freezer. We ate some mini cheesecakes while there. I bought a Harvey Wallbanger cake out of curiosity, some cookies for my daughter, and two big old brownies to make sundaes of at some point.

Then Gayle gave us some leftover clam sauce and several pounds of dry spaghetti and some lettuce.

So, today my husband worked from 11-4. So we had a small meal at ten so he would make it through the day. At noon, I ate the leftovers from my daughter's meal when we went out to dinner Thursday.

Creative reuse is half the battle when you're watching the budget.

My daughter had a salad for lunch, with the matchstick carrots and broccoli from her party last week, topped with some ring bologna and colby jack (colby jack also from the party) for protein. Then we had a treat.

I took two smallish cookies... larger than a half dollar but not as big around as a drinking glass, and took some of the Birthday Cake Batter ice cream also leftover from her birthday party and made a little ice cream sandwich. I topped with whipped cream.

I did something similar for myself but I used the Harvey Wallbanger cake.

Ice Cream Man and Spaghetti

My daughter had a meltdown today when I told her we didn't have money for the ice cream man. She must have cried for ten minutes. A little while after she settled down, I offered her an ice cream cone Mommy-style and she enthusiastically said yes. I warned her this would be the best ice cream cone ever.

I started with a wafer cone, the kind my father-in-law brings. I packed in some vanilla bean ice cream and lined the top with Goldfish honey grahams, a gift from a neighbor who visited the Pepperidge Farm Outlet. I spooned on some butterscotch topping, added another portion of ice cream and topped the whole mess with rainbow sprinkles.

My daughter is so over the ice cream man.

For dinner, I wanted to use the leftover beef BBQ. My daughter had eaten most of it for lunch yesterday. I opted for spaghetti. We made meat sauce with the beef BBQ and then served with grated parmesan and shredded mozzerella. We all had two big plates.

Groceries

It's the 27th. Yesterday's take out probably pushed us to $310 for dining out and groceries for the month of May. Just a couple more days and we have a new month... a clean slate... but I caved, and sent my husband to the store for peanut butter and salad. He spent close to $45.

Have you noticed my nasty habit? Once I break the budget I do so repeatedly, that's why I fight so hard that first time. I know myself.

We had ice cream for dinner, at our favorite creamery, because the owner there asked us to stop by... And our daughter tends to have the run of the place. It's the Purple Cow in downtown Easton and their ice cream is heavenly. Today I had a strawberry sundae with tiramisu ice cream. The fruit made it dinner.

But I remained very aware that my daughter had a grilled cheese for lunch and I needed to get some vegetable matter into her, hence the salad. Which got eaten very reluctantly. My daughter and her daddy went to the store for salad and as she has been on a peanut butter and jelly kick lately, I suggested a splurge for store-bought bread.

My husband picked up Giant's bakery multigrain sandwich bread, which I adore but will not buy because it's up to $4.29 a loaf (I swear a few months ago it was $4.59). It makes the most perfect toast. I could literally eat it every morning for the rest of my life. We call it magic bread.

My husband put the magic bread in the basket and my daughter grabbed a baguette, shook it, and yelled, "No, Daddy. Mommy said buy bread."

Well, when they got home, my husband augmented a Dole salad in the bag with some extra stuff and served with bread. He apologized, because he bought two bags when it always turns out that we only need one... But the bread was delicious. At the same time, it seemed weird. Then I noticed he used Smart Balance and not butter. I choked up the different to that.

But I looked at the baguette and it looked soft. I turned it over, to read the label, wondering if it was indeed a French-style baguette or something else. It was a Nature's Promise loaf, no preservatives, made with unbleached flour.

Then I noticed it: "Finish baking at home. 5-10 minutes at 375 degrees." A-ha! That explains it...

Brownie Sundaes

Warning: The following blog entry contains items that are not good for you, are not homemade, and are not necessary. But they may have saved my marriage.

I wanted brownies. Then my daughter and my husband started screaming at each other. Okay, he was screaming and she was crying. She was trying to play in the drain with the chemical drain cleaner. So the yelling was warranted. The commotion, and a very long day, screamed "warm brownie sundae."

My husband volunteered to go out for the goods.

"Vanilla?" he asked.

"Vanilla bean," I specified.

Then he called me an ice cream snob and reminded me that he remembered my ice cream idiosyncracies.

"What's my budget?" he asked.

"Thirty bucks if you're using the MAC card."

Out the door he went. My cell phone rang ten minutes later.

"They don't have anything remotely brownie like," he said and then described the contents of the bakery department. "The only thing that looks like something you'd like is a tray of brownies, but it's like nine bucks."

"How many brownies?"

"Seven on the top row."

"Buy it," I said. He laughed.

It had 16 brownies. We ate four (two each, warmed in the microwave with the ice cream on top). We kept three aside to enjoy as a family tomorrow. The remaining nine we wrapped individually in wax paper and taped shut and packaged into two freezer bags.

Total cost: $13.07 and that included half and half for our coffee.

Pumpkin waffles for dinner

Dinner last night...

Pumpkin in this form counts as a veggie in my house. This is one of those rare instances where we use the big dinner plates...

This is the pumpkin waffle recipe from Post Punk Kitchen.

www.theppk.com

www.theppk.com/recipes/dbrecipes/recipe.php?RecipeID=96

The 'sausage' is 2/3 of a Morningstar vegetarian breakfast patty. The ice cream is 1/3 of a Turkey Hill ice cream sandwich. I wasn't being cheap; we only had one ice cream sandwich and two sausages left. We drizzled a little pure maple syrup on the waffle and the sausage, but these waffles are so yummy you don't need it. The recipe made six Belgian waffles for me. We each ate one and I froze the rest. They'll be breakfast on some crazy morning.