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I Have the Nicest Mods in the Universe*
I overslept this morning.** Hellhounds and I got back*** to the cottage after our morning [sic] hurtle and found: 
It’s from my mods. Congratulating me on getting the frelling† corrections on PEGASUS done on time.††
THANK YOU. YOU ARE WONDERFUL HUMAN BEINGS.†††
I was hoping to save some of the wrapping paper which you will note has roses on it, but it’s so damn fragile I’m hoping it’s biodegradable to comfort me for failing. And while I love the new standard cut-flower delivery thing where they come with their stems in actual water . . . there is the little matter of removing the bulge of plastic wrapping that contains the water . . . remember I said about fragile? There was language. As well as water all over the floor.
But hey. There are flowers. Beauuuuuutiful flowers. Beam. Awwwwwww.
I may have to post another photo tomorrow after I, you know, arrange them. It’s been a ridiculously busy day. I have no idea what I’ve been doing.‡ I was going to spend all day on the sofa. Pardon me, what happened? I got about twenty minutes on the sofa. Hellhounds couldn’t believe it when I turfed them off again after less than half an hour.
And I was still almost late for bell practise tonight. Niall after a mere fortnight as Ringing Master is rapidly morphing into a major demonic fiend. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. But I don’t recall Machiavelli mentioning the horns and the spinal plates. I’m sure I can see the glitter of incipient green and purple scales on Niall’s forehead and his teeth are definitely growing. There were only six of us plus two beginners so we were ringing pretty much all the time, but because I am also Niall’s partner in handbell crime he picks on me.‡‡ You, do thus and such, he says. —Regretfully repressed rude gestures.‡‡‡
Including making me ring Kent. I haven’t rung Kent in at least a couple of months. Leo is also learning Kent, but he’s rung it more recently; last time we had a good enough band I rang Stedman. I grabbed the treble and held on, which worked the first time through, while Leo got his practise in . . . although I hadn’t actually rung the complex treble on a treble-bob method in probably two months either, so it was a little more exciting than was strictly desirable. I then slunk off to rememorize the inside line frantically in case Niall remembered me later, except I kept getting dragged out of my corner to ring rounds with beginners. Somebody else can do it! I’m busy! You, said Niall. Ring the four. Fiend.
But I got through Kent. It was, as I have a habit of saying about touches I’ve been ringing in, not a thing of beauty, but we got to the end. I was trying not to congratulate myself audibly when Richard started giving me one of his little frelling essays on ringing—I like Richard’s essays, and I particularly like the way he presents them in this calm, reasonable tone of voice as if you have half a clue what he’s talking about—but this one began with the shocking declaration that the line for Kent was easy to learn, it was the practicalities of ringing it accurately that are the problem, and I lost focus a trifle. Easy to learn. There speaks someone who has been ringing for sixty years.
I’m not going to get my day on the sofa tomorrow either. I have a frelling wedding to ring at Ditherington. Never mind. I will come home to flowers.§
* * *
* No, I haven’t warned them to brace themselves for a deeply embarrassing public expression of appreciation. What would be the fun in that?
** Don’t even ask.
*** And it’s been a beautiful day. April in February, as I said on Twitter earlier. Nearly shirtsleeve weather and sunny.^ Wha’? Huh? Hellhounds and I couldn’t cope. We tottered around feeling unstrung and looking nervously in the shadows. Sunlight produces such dramatic shadows. And shivering keeps you awake.
^ Mud to the ankles though. Whew. Some connection with familiar reality.
† The card does not say ‘frelling’. I’m not sure if this is restraint on the mods’ part or an understandable desire not to complicate matters. That’s f, r, e, l, l . . . oh, never mind. I know from experience florists’ clerks can be rather creative even when you spell things out really carefully.
†† They apparently arrived in English, too, which is a bonus. I wasn’t at all sure. By the time I hit the ‘send’ button yesterday evening the stuff on the screen was starting to swim around and form strange new clusters, racemes and inflorescences hitherto unknown to science, botany, or human visual range. But I got a note from my editor’s assistant today saying that she was working her way through them and while you can’t get bloodstains on email it didn’t break off in the middle of a word or anything.
††† There are moments when this frelling blog is worth it.
‡ Oversleeping. And I had another cup of tea with Oisin. Who is going all mean and fierce and telling me he’s expecting something musical out of me next week. Just because I got my novel turned in! What a big bully!^ He had even finally got me my own copy of the Capriol Suite^^. Mind you there is no reason I couldn’t go on playing off the photocopies he’d made for me^^^. I also may have led him on a little because I said that some of my blog people had suggested I set the lullaby at the beginning of PEGASUS and he replied kindly and sympathetically that while he will look forward to it, the thought of what I might consider a suitable lullaby for a three-armed witch and a feminist dragon gives him pause. Ha ha ha ha very frelling funny ha ha. You be nice or I’ll write it for organ.
^ Blondel will probably whap me around on Tuesday too
^^ Which has been OS at the publisher forever. Sheet music publishers make book publishers look like unfallen archangels and shiny harp-plucking seraphim.
^^^And because I am a lazy slut I will undoubtedly continue to play off the photocopies for some time because they’ve got all my painfully worked out fingering on them, and the large red slashes that mean pay attention to this bit, you idiot, and I’m going to resist going to the extra effort to move it all over. Aside from the fact that I am intimidated by all those glossy new clean pages with, you know, covers on either end.
‡‡ I am surrounded by musical male bullies.^ Where did I go wrong?
^ Of course this includes the hellhounds. It does not include Peter, however, who is slightly prouder of being unmusical than the facts support. But it will do for keeping him off this list.
‡‡‡Vicky would not approve of rude gestures. Our tower is even cleaner than this blog. Sigh.
§ More beaming. More awwwwwww.
Silly Canon
This all began . . . a lot of weeks ago. (I’m slow.) But there was a thread on the forum that for reasons which now escape me indulged in a sudden burst of composing epitaphs for Black Bear.* This was happening right around the time Oisin suggested I write a canon. I sat down at the piano thinking about Row Row Row Your Boat and J S Bach, and somehow rowing your boat won. I’m also now sort of half on the lookout for short, not too horrifyingly profound and/or literary** poems to set and mental slippage in the McKinley polity is normal so I found myself idly toying in a canonical sort of way with one or two of the epigraphs from the forum . . . and discovered they were too long and complicated. I wanted about two lines for my canon . . . and I also already had a semi-cantering rhythm in my head—aaugh! Too late! You want the words first!***—so I hastily wrote a couple. Of very silly lines. And set them.
And here they are. It’s taken me this long partly because once it occurred to me I wanted to post this I wanted Oisin to look at it with an eye to my not making a complete fool† of myself, which has meant that I have to keep waiting till next Friday for my music lesson—that, and wrestling with Finale over various things. ††
This is only the sheet music, I’m afraid—anyone out there who sings SAT or B and has three friends who sing the others, please have a go. ††† Oisin said that I’ll get complaints about the octave leaps . . . but they’re nice straightforward octaves, not anything alarming like diminished sevenths and demisemihemiquavers or something that you have to think about. Oisin also said that the tenor ‘beware’ is hard to sing . . . and then promptly sang it himself, so I’m not too impressed.
But mainly this is for a giggle. So I’m not going to worry about it.
And . . . it’s Black Bear’s birthday today. Just by the way. Most of what I’ve written about writing the Silly Canon is sheer truth, but it is also true that when I realised her birthday was coming up I jiggery-pokeried a bit so I could post it today, and give her a really nasty shock . . . I mean, a lovely surprise. ‡
Happy Birthday, Black Bear!
Download sheet music (PDF)
* Yes. Very weird. As I say, I don’t remember why.
** Special exception for people you’re married to, and Anonymous can’t complain.
*** Well, I do, if I’m going to use words
† A semi-fool is acceptable, and probably inevitable
†† Arrrgh. As per previous blog entries. Also I’m also just slow. Slow, slow, slow. Well, I’m supposed to be finishing a novel too.
††† And then record it and send me a link.
‡ And you don’t have to download it: you can just read it on your screen.
Dogs
Darkness is lying in a corner of the kitchen, moaning. It’s been a really great day.
Even after I yanked some of the bedding out from under Chaos last night so that his brother had something to lie on, Darkness didn’t settle properly. He’d lie down in the crate for a while and then get up and go find a piece of kitchen floor and sprawl there. Then he started whining. At first I thought it was his old pre-diet-change colic coming back—he’s the one spent several days of the hot weather a week ago spouting at both ends, and he was always the one more prone to colic: Chaos preferred simply withdrawing from food altogether—but the other standard symptoms were not present: tender drum-like tummy and roaring gut noises. Eventually he quieted down and we all went to bed, but there was a lot more scrabbling and clicking nails than usual from the kitchen overnight. Which I woke up to listen to, because I’m like that.
This morning it became clear that it was his back/neck/spine bothering him again. He wouldn’t jump in the car and when I boosted him in he squealed. We were in kind of a hurry: today was the day for southdowner to come down again for our ‘intervention’ with Mike. I overslept on account of listening to restless hellhound(s) so we banged out on a short nearby walk. Darkness seemed fine on the level—eager to be going out, tail high, nose seeking trouble—but he didn’t want to get back in the car. And when I picked him up he squealed again.
Got home to message from poor southdowner . . . who had had a puncture. And would be forty-five minutes late. I deadheaded a few roses and fretted.
But it wasn’t a great way to begin our intervention: southdowner does it professionally, so presumably she has a ‘serenity’ button to press when the stress levels are rising. I think the rest of us were done no favours by having forty-five more minutes to fine-tune our worst-case scenarios. But at least we weren’t jacking up a hot car on a motor/highway and wrestling with jammed wheel nuts—many of you will have had opportunity to notice for yourself that those little screwy things holding the wheel to the car are ALWAYS jammed when you have a flat tyre.
Note: I may have got some of the following wrong. I am not a professional dog trainer. Southdowner is. If I say something that you know is bulltiddly, blame me, not southdowner.
It’s a miserable business, going into someone’s home because they’ve messed up so badly they need an expert to tell them how to clean up their act. I felt like a bailiff. Southdowner is brilliant—she just laid it quietly on the line: commit to retraining—serious retraining—or rehome him now. And Daisy does love him—she wants to give it a try.
Most of you dog people out there will already know about NILIF: Nothing in Life is Free. A couple of people mentioned it on the forum when I posted about Mike a fortnight or whenever ago—after southdowner and I went to visit him by ourselves, when Daisy and Roy were away, and I found out he wouldn’t even allow his collar to be put on without a major struggle. I can’t find the site where southdowner printed off what she gave Daisy (and me), but this looks pretty close: http://factoidz.com/nothing-in-life-is-free/
And this is a good example of it in action: http://www.greyhoundlist.org/nothing_is_free.htm
Southdowner recommended this judiciously mixed with Leading the Dance:
http://www.shirleychong.com/keepers/dance.html
. . . But the short form is, they have to keep Mike on a lead at all times in the house for TWELVE WEEKS minimum. The only time he’s off lead is when he’s locked up in his crate. But he wouldn’t be in the state of total four-legged furry disaster he’s in if they were good at drawing lines and holding them, you know? I’m not too bad at drawing lines, but I’d find the twelve weeks Daisy and her family are looking at very hard.
That took about an hour and a half: Southdowner demonstrated, and then invited Daisy and Roy to do it themselves, so they’d know what and how, and what it felt like, encouraged them to ask questions, and pointed out that dog training is really only a spin on parenting skills: and they’ve got three great grown-up human kids, so they obviously can do it. And one question in my mind got answered in one of those ‘duh’ moments. I’ve said—or shrieked—a number of times about the Mike situation, but they’ve had dogs before! What happened! And the answer is . . . Southdowner said, when is the last time you raised a puppy from eight weeks old? They looked at each other. About eighteen years ago. Things change. You change. I’ve said pretty often that the hellhounds are very likely my last puppies: I doubt I’m going to be up to the mania in another fifteen years or so. Zara and I may have pushed Daisy and Roy too far . . . but I keep remembering how happy Daisy was when I gave her the itty-bitty handful that Mike was eight months ago . . .
The thing that I found the most hopeful about Mike’s future is how instant and dramatic the change in him was, just the hour and a half we were there. Southdowner put him on a very short lead and simply held him till he stopped trying to turn himself inside out—he likes making a to-do over new people—and then as soon as he thought ‘well, this isn’t much fun’ and sat down . . . loosened the lead. The moment he started flinging himself around again, the lead was shortened. And so on. The person on the other end of the lead goes through doorways first, and he is not allowed through until he will wait on a loose lead, to be invited. And yes, doorways took a few minutes—a few long boring minutes—but he was waiting and coming through on a loose lead by the time we left. He is so trainable—that’s the other good news in a situation that desperately needs some good news. But he’s been doing the Wild Thing for eight months, and it’s going to take time to establish new behaviour as habit. And while we were there, he didn’t know what had hit him yet: when it begins to penetrate that this is the new system, I imagine there will be some fairly epic tantrums.
Southdowner took off as soon as she’d dropped me back at the cottage: note that she’d clipped the first day of her holiday to come south and sort things out . . . and that her holiday was happening in Scotland. So she drove down from the midlands—and don’t forget the puncture—to Hampshire, and turned around and drove to Scotland. She is a heroine. And please please please let her not be wasting her time with Mike. . . .
Meanwhile. I couldn’t get hold of the animal physio, the acupuncturist she recommended, or my old homeopathic vet who also does acupuncture. Darkness can’t even go up the two steps to the front door of the mews—the cottage stairs are much longer, but each individual riser is much lower—without squeaking. And I’ve managed to give myself backache from trying to figure out the optimum way of lifting him in and out of the car: the usual arms-around-both-ends method does not work. Ordinarily I don’t think this would be an issue—I still lift them both over dog-proof stiles periodically—but my back has been in a tetchy mood since the four-inch heels for the opera on Monday.
I finally gave up on the alternatives and took him to the ordinary vet surgery this evening, where the ordinary vet said that he guessed, by feel (even I can feel how hard and tight Darkness’ neck and back are) and description that we were looking at a slipped disc type situation which, he says, is common in long skinny running dogs, even young ones, and that we treat it accordingly with anti-inflammatories and hope that it fuses, and that if it happens again Darkness had better be x rayed in case there’s anything else going on. The vet said that because dogs gallumph around on all fours, anti-inflammatories usually work better on them than on humans and I said, and if it fuses, do we have to worry about exactly the same thing happening to the next vertebra? And the vet said, we might. –Oh good.
And I brought them home—Chaos had spent his time at the vet trying to make himself invisible in corners: he hasn’t forgotten the diabolically painful and completely useless jab they both got as part of the comprehensively useless treatment for what turned out to be a cereal allergy, from some whippersnapper of young female vet maybe about a year ago, and it still makes me furious that by one piece of ill-judged arrogance I’ve been left with a dog terrified of the vet’s. Grrrrrrr. And they’ve had supper, which included Darkness’ first anti-inflammatory, which ought to start calming things down. And he’s lying in a corner of the kitchen floor moaning.
Remind me why companion animals are supposed to be a good thing. Remind me of all those scientific studies that say that pets are good for you.
I’m so demoralised I haven’t even the spirit for footnotes.
Ice Heroine
. . . Because ‘Sorbet Heroine’ somehow doesn’t have quite the right ring to it. Or even ‘Granita Heroine.’ But all of those of you who don’t read comments, look at what arrived last night. And for those of you who do read comments, myself included, I want to read it again. Carefully.
Which I’m going to do right now, leaning back with my feet up, and a bowl of something chilly at hand. It’s been a heavy, sticky day–Connie and I this morning were rolling Sisyphus’ boulder uphill for our lesson, and the hellhounds permitted me to get on with work after only a token post-lunch riot*–and definitely a perfect moment for a dissertation on sorbet.
Anette, the Great Dane |
Dear Robin
This is a bit big for a comment and not on topic anyway, but perhaps you can use it as a blog.
Note: Yes, thank you very much, I will.
NON-DAIRY ICE-CREAM 101
If you freeze a cup of still, pure water, you get a big, hard ice cube, and the purpose of making ice-cream is actually to break that cube into something edible. Flavor is usually added as well, but that is not the main purpose (see Medieval Ice-cream).
In a household kitchen the breaking is normally done by adding fat, sugar, alcohol, fibers, or air. Commercial ice-cream makers have a few extra options, but let us stick to food and leave chemistry out of the kitchen.
Fat in ice-cream usually means cream, but egg yolks can serve the same purpose (see Sabayon Ice-cream). Oils are best used only for greasing any moulds used to shape the ice-cream, and while I have tried making ice-cream involving avocado, the result frankly wasn’t good enough for me to post a recipe. Coconut cream is a possibility, if you like the flavor, but I think it works more because of the fibers than because of the fat (see Coconut Ice-cream with Lime syrup).
Sugar of some kind is added to most ice-creams, but if you have an especially nice honey or maple syrup, it is entirely possible to make a sorbet just with this. The proportions are about 1 part sweet-stuff to 4 or 5 parts water (volume and weight comes out about the same), but taste before adding all the water, and remember that it becomes less sweet when frozen. If you are one of us barbarians, who occasionally add things to wine, then a dollop of Rose-Honey Ice-cream isn’t bad in a glass of slightly sour wine.
Alcohol is very useful in any non-dairy ice-cream not intended for children. Cordials are the obvious choice, and I tend to use them in approximately the same proportions as the sweet-stuff above (see Coffee Ice-cream/Granita and Chocolate Ice-cream). The strong, non-sweet alcohols I tend to use only in the shape of a splash of brandy in a Strawberry Ice-cream or rum in Peach Ice-cream (see Fruit Ice-cream), but Vodka Sorbet works well in both mixed drinks and in cold tomato soup. The once so popular Champagne or Red Wine sorbets have never worked very well for me, but try taking a look at the recipe for Punch Ice.
Fiber in the shape of a fruit pulp makes what is probably the best base for non-dairy ice-cream (see Fruit Ice-cream), and I cannot think of any fruit that would not work. Tofu must be the silk type, and – while I’ve never been quite satisfied with my results – it isn’t bad in the Tiramisu-mousse Ice-cream. Coconut I have already mentioned, but chestnut puree works as well – I just don’t like it very much.
Air is what you add to your ice-cream by churning it while it freezes, and you can enhance the effect by adding stiffly beaten egg whites to your ice-cream mix (see Punch Ice-cream, a.o.). It is, however, also possible to use beaten egg whites to make ice-cream without churning (see Chocolate Chinchilla Ice-cream a.o.).
MEDIEVAL ICE-CREAM:
In a way it’s silly to make so much work out of serving people, what is basically a cup of water, but it does look pretty, and if your guests have various allergies or diets, it’s a fairly useful dessert.
Ice-cold or even frozen whole fruits used to be considered a luxury (the ice-swans filled with fruit on buffets are a remnant of that), and from that there’s only a brief step to re-freeze shaved ice in the shape of fruits.
Ingredients:
Boiled water,
Egg white (optional),
Syrup, essence or cordial.
Start by chilling the boiled water, and prepare as many individuals moulds as you want by either greasing them with almond oil or lining them with kitchen film/saran wrap. Be careful to get the film smooth on the mould, so it doesn’t get frozen into the ice. Churn the water in an ice-cream maker, spoon the slush into the moulds, and freeze. If your guests don’t include vegans or people allergic to egg, you can get a softer set by adding a stiffly beaten egg white per pint (2 cups/500 ml) to the water before churning. When serving remove the moulds and drip a few drops or spoonfuls of your chosen flavor to the centre of your ice, from where it’ll spread through the shape and puddle around the base. I’m partial to Cherry Cordial, but Crème de Menthe (Mint Cordial) or Limoncello (Italian Lemon Cordial) are nice too.
SABAYON ICE-CREAM
I don’t know if everybody is familiar with the Italian dessert, Sabayon, which is made by whipping egg yolks, sugar and wine or fortified wine together over a low heat until you have something resembling a very fluffy custard. You can freeze a normal Sabayon to an ice-cream without any churning, but I think the result is better with churning and a few tweaks to the recipe. It’s also less work, because with churning it becomes unnecessary to heat the mix.
Ingredients:
4 egg yolks,
4 tablespoon sugar,
Ca. 150-250 ml (0.5 – 1 cup) marsala (sweet fortified wine), sherry, white wine, rum, etc.
Beat the egg yolks with the sugar until they are thick and almost white. Add the liquid, beat again, and taste to see if it needs more, then freeze while churning. This is a fairly small amount of ice-cream, and if you serve it on its own you might want to double the recipe for four persons. It is, however, a very intense ice-cream, and I usually serve it along with fruit. The marsala version is good with grapes in wine jelly, the rum with baked banana, etc.
COCONUT ICE-CREAM WITH LIME SYRUP
Coconut cream/milk varies a lot from brand to brand, and you might want to dilute it with 0.5 – 1 can of water.
Ingredients:
1 can of coconut cream or milk,
Sugar,
Water,
2 limes,
0.5 vanilla pod.
Pour the coconut cream/milk into a bowl, and sweeten it to taste – you need to stir until the sugar is completely dissolved – then freeze while churning.
While the ice-cream is churning grate the zest of the limes, and squeeze out the juice. In a small pot mix the juice and zest with approximately the same amount of water and at least 4 tablespoons of sugar – you might want a lot more sugar – then heat gently while stirring. It should take only a few minutes at a low simmer before this small amount thickens and becomes syrupy.
Serve the Coconut Ice-cream with the Lime Syrup dripped on top and perhaps a sprinkling of chopped chocolate.
ROSE-HONEY ICE-CREAM
Ingredients:
Honey,
Water,
Fresh leaves of fragrant roses or rose water,
A clove or a few whole cardamom pods (optional).
Gently heat the honey with twice its volume in water and the whole spices. Remove from the heat, and dilute with more water until you have the sweetness you want (again remember that freezing “steals” some sweetness). Add the roseleaves (I like the color that dark red ones gives the ice), and let it steep all day or overnight. Sieve and freeze while churning.
I plan to try this with edible gold or silver added after the sieving
VODKA SORBET
Pure vodka doesn’t normally freeze, so you’ll need to dilute it. Water will do the trick, but I find the recipe below more useful.
Ingredients:
1 part vodka,
4 parts 7-up (stirred to remove some of the fizz),
Lemon juice to taste.
Mix and freeze while churning. Serve in a glass and pour over for example orange juice, spicy tomato juice, Blue Curacao, Crème de Cassis, Ginger ale or Dry Martini.
All the ice-cream recipes so far have been of the sorbet/sherbet type, but where sorbets are supposed to be smooth and with ice crystals as fine as possible, a granita consists of coarse crystals of flavored ice and cannot be made in an ice-cream maker.
How to make Granita:
Pour your flavored liquid into a shallow, lidded freezing container and freeze for about one hour. Stir the ice along the sides into the liquid in the middle with a coarse fork and freeze again. Repeat 3 or 4 times until it’s all frozen. The granita is now ready to serve, but if you need to keep it frozen for a while, you can just scrape it up in free crystals again when serving.
COFFEE ICE-CREAM/GRANITA
This is basically just frozen very strong and sweet coffee with – or without – a big splash of coffee cordial, but it’s very good as both sorbet and granita.
Ingredients:
8 tablespoon grinded coffee,
4 tablespoon sugar,
2 pints (4 cups) boiling water,
Coffee cordial to taste.
Let water, coffee and sugar simmer together for 30 min, then cool, sieve, add the cordial, and freeze.
TEA ICE-CREAM/GRANITA WITH LIMONCELLO
Just as with the coffee this works equally well as a sorbet and as a granite.
Ingredients:
3 bag of your favorite tea,
1.5 pints (3 cups) boiling water,
0.5 cup sugar,
Limoncello to taste.
Pour the hot water over the tea, and let it steep for 5 min before removing the bags and adding the sugar. Stir until the sugar has dissolved, and let it cool. Add the cordial, and freeze.
If you prefer it, you can use other fruit cordials such as peach or apple instead of the Limoncello or you can just omit it.
LEMON ICE-CREAM/GRANITA
I find this a bit boring on its own, but very nice in a glass of ice-tea.
Ingredients:
150 ml (ca. 0.75 cup) lemon juice,
The grated zest of a lemon,
150 g (ca. 0.75 cup) sugar,
250 ml boiling water.
Dissolve the sugar in the water, add the other ingredients, cool, and freeze either as a sorbet or a granite.
FRUIT ICE-CREAM
You can sieve a mush of for example strawberries or passion fruit and make a granita, but fruits still with their fibers are also ideal for sorbet.
Here’s a series of different fruit ice-creams all intended for sorbets:
Peach:
1 can of peaches with liquid.
Blitz in a blender or food processor until smooth, then freeze while churning.
This is the easiest of all ice-creams, and other canned fruits such as apricots and pineapple can be treated the same way.
Passion fruit:
The pulp of 8 or more ripe (wrinkled) passion fruits,
150-200 g (ca. 0.75 cup) sugar,
250 ml (1 cup) cold water.
Mix and stir to dissolve the sugar, and let it steep for 1 hour. Sieve and freeze while churning.
Watermelon:
1.5 pound watermelon meat without pips,
150-200 g (ca. 0.75 cup) sugar,
Juice of half a lemon,
250 ml (1 cup) cold water.
Mix and blitz together in a blender or food processor until smooth. Freeze while churning.
Other ripe melons can be treated the same way, as can pineapple.
Strawberry:
I am so fortunate as to have a very superior old type of strawberries growing in my garden. Most of the crop is eaten fresh and straight from the plants, but in bumper-crop years I sometimes want to preserve some for later as an ice-cream. Commercially grown strawberries are types where things like stiff stalks, high yields, and tough skin are more important than flavor, so I really think you need different recipes for different types of strawberries.
Ingredients I:
1 pound full-flavored strawberries,
2 tablespoons of sugar.
Blitz, taste, sieve, and freeze.
Ingredients II:
1 pound fresh strawberries,
1-2 tablesp. fresh orange or lemon juice,
100-150 g (0.5 cup sugar),
75 ml (0.25 cup) water.
Boil the water and sugar together for a few minutes to dissolve the sugar, and let it cool. Blitz and sieve the strawberries, add the other ingredients, taste, and freeze.
Ingredients III:
1 pound frozen strawberries,
1-2 tablesp. fresh orange or lemon juice,
0.5 split vanilla pod,
150-200 g (ca. 0.75 cup) sugar,
Mix all the ingredients in a pot, and let it stand until the strawberries have thawed and produced some liquid. Boil together at low heat, and let it cool. Blitz, taste, sieve, and freeze.
TIRAMISU- MOUSSE ICE-CREAM
Just replacing mascarpone with tofu in a Tiramisu doesn’t work unless you adjust the other ingredients. Once that is done, it’s actually better frozen, and if you are going to freeze it anyway you don’t really need the tofu to dilute the taste.
Ingredients:
4 egg yolks,
60 g (0.25 cup) sugar,
1 packet silk tofu (that’s 125-150 g (5-6 oz)) (optional),
4 egg whites,
60 g (0.25 cup) sugar,
Instant espresso or coffee powder,
4 tablespoon dark rum,
Good quality dark chocolate.
Beat the egg yolks very thick and pale with the first portion of sugar. Cream the tofu until smooth. Whip the egg whites to a stiff meringue with the second portion of sugar. Dissolve enough coffee in the rum to get a pronounced coffee flavor. Chop the chocolate. If you want to make this in an ice-cream maker, mix everything except the chocolate, which should be sprinkled over after freezing. If you have a very cold freezer, there’s no need for churning, and you just mix everything and freeze it in a container. Serve with cookies, but try finding some more interesting than Lady Fingers. I like Cat Tongues and Florentines.
PUNCH ICE
It quite possible to make an ice-cream just by freezing ordinary punch (lemon, sugar, rum and water), but this recipe started life as a Jewish version of the Victorian party-dessert Ice-Punch. The texture is supposed to be very slushy, so that you can almost drink it.
Ingredients:
0.5 bottle of champagne or sweet white wine,
Juice and grated zest of 1 lemon and 2 oranges,
75 g (0.33 cup) cane sugar,
4 tablespoon rum,
4 egg whites,
150-200 g (ca. 1.5 cup) powdered/confectioner sugar.
Mix wine, juice, zest, cane sugar and rum, and let it stand until the sugar has dissolved (over-night is fine). Freeze while churning until you have a thick slush. This you can store in the freezer for a few hours, but if you leave it longer, you’ll probably need to break it up with an electric whisk. Shortly before serving beat the egg whites to a meringue with the powdered sugar, and fold this into the slush ice. Serve immediately in glasses or small bowls.
CHOCOLATE ICE-CREAM
It is entirely possible to make a non-dairy chocolate ice-cream. The simplest ways are:
Version 1: Replace the wine in the Sabayon Ice-cream with Cocoa cordial.
Version 2: Replace the vodka in the Vodka Ice-cream with Cocoa cordial and the lemon with vanilla extract.
Version 3: Replace the coffee in the Tiramisu with good pure cocoa (not the sweet instant) powder, but add it to the eggs as it might lump in the cold liquid.
My favorite non-dairy chocolate ice is however something entirely different:
FROZEN CHOCOLATE CHINCHILLA
Now, before anyone start accusing me of covering small animals with chocolate, I better explain that a chinchilla can be both – though not normally at the same time – a small fur-bearing animal and a soft cake made almost entirely of beaten egg whites.
Ingredients:
6 egg whites,
125 g (5 oz) grated dark chocolate or 4 tablespoons pure cocoa and 5 tablespoons sugar,
2 tablespoons chopped nuts,
3 teaspoons ground cinnamon or coffee powder (not instant).
Beat the egg whites very stiff, fold in the other ingredients, and bake (medium heat) or steam for about 1 hour. A chinchilla is normally eaten warm or tepid, but I like to eat it slightly frozen/partly thawed.
Anette, the Great Dane
* Involving plastic rings, tennis balls, tug of war ropes, etc
Five Heroines
So, at last, our Five Heroines of Blog Food:
AJLR
Jmeadows
Maren
Sarah from Boston
Southdowner
In alphabetical order, which is somewhat serendipitous in this case because it was AJLR’s idea, poor woman, and how many times has she looked at herself in the mirror since and said, possibly even aloud, Why? Why? However, we’re all very grateful, perhaps especially us regular recipe posters, because we can look it up if we’ve already posted something or not. Phew. Some of the time I know I’ve already told you a story I’m telling you again, but this is Days in the Life and there are, you know, themes.* But I will try not to repost recipes.
Anyway: hip hip HOORAY! Hip hip HOORAY! Hip hip . . . HOOOOOOORAAAAAAAY!**
And I suggest you open another bottle of champagne to perform this second toast.*** All reasons for champagne are good reasons. Including having another empty bottle to stick a single rose–or, just conceivably, some other flower–in. I don’t quite choose my champagne by the colour of its label and the suitability of its graphic design as a future vase but I will not deny that it crosses my mind. I love having cut flowers in the house but I’m certainly not going to cut my own!!! †, and florists are expensive. One option is to blow three quid or so on One Perfect Rose and stick it in an empty bottle of the Widow or Tattinger. You’ll acquire a tedious reputation for artiness, but it can’t be helped.
Enjoy yourselves. . . .
* * *
* Hellhounds, for example. Who, having tortured me adequately over the question of eating dinner, speaking of food, are now crashed out in the dog bed looking indescribably sweet and innocent and furry and cute. Mmmph. I however can see the faint glitter of very-slightly-open eye. I’m still feeling pretty mouldy, so there’s been more sofa time than usual lately and they want to make sure they don’t miss anything.
** “hip hip hooray – ‘three cheers’ – originally in common use as ‘hip hip hurrah’; derived from the middle ages Crusades battle-cry ‘Hieroslyma est perdita’ (Jerusalem is fallen), and subsequently shortened by Germanic tribes when fighting Jews to ‘hep hep’, and used in conjunction with ‘hu-raj’ (a Slavic term meaning ‘to paradise’), so that the whole phrase meant ‘Jerusalem is fallen and we are on the way to paradise’.”
http://www.businessballs.com/clichesorigins.htm
Okay, do we believe this one? I feel a strong downward pressure on one of my legs, myself. Pull the other one, it’s got bells on. ‘Hieroslyma est perdita’?!? Well, maybe it sounded different in the 12th century. And hands up anyone who didn’t start saying ‘My bad’ as a result of watching Buffy? These people take Buffy as a cultural phenomenon waay too lightly. Of course it’s true I haven’t been a teenager in many decades and I don’t get out much, but that’s kind of the point, isn’t it? People like me say ‘my bad’ too.
*** If it was really good champagne, you have a really good stopper, and you didn’t drink much the other night, it might still be good tonight. Champagne, like most other desirable substances, including people, roses and hellhounds, is funny stuff. You can have firmly and carefully stoppered^ up your expensive bottle immediately after pouring out your one glass each for the two of you, and it can be totally yesterdayish tomorrow evening. And golly doesn’t that hurt. Ow ow ow ow ow. That thin, needle-like penetrative sound is your credit card screaming. And then on another occasion you’ll have had two glasses each two nights in a row and there’ll be maybe one glass left, and because you’re like this you put the stopper back in anyway even though you know it’s no use, but pouring champagne down the sink is just too wildly painful.^^ And the next night you’ll thriftily try it, bracing yourself for the worst and . . . it’s all fizzy and lively like it was when you first opened it and cheers you right up. Not least at the prospect of not pouring it down the sink. This happened just last night so it’s on my mind. The ordinary world is full of universal-law-breaking anomalies. I’m sure black holes and quarks come into it somewhere.
Although here’s a universal law for you: drink your quarter-bottles of champagne fast. They don’t last –unopened!–worth a stale canapé. Peter says it’s something to do with volume and surface area. Ah, I say wisely. Like why a cow goes splat when a mouse bounces.^^^
^ Hannah gave us a silver champagne stopper for a wedding present. Well, the only other possibility was a silver chocolate salver and I think she made the right choice.
^^ It usually goes in the next batch of soup really, which isn’t quite so brutal.
^^^ As you will have realised by now, my grasp of all things scientific is a trifle . . . undependable. So I went to google and typed in ‘volume surface area gravity how hard something falls’ and after almost being lost forever in some serious science chat I fetched up at this rather enigmatic site–who are these people? Do they just compose and hang basic educational science essays for fun?–whose article on size and scale is very interesting and expressed in nice straightforward non-scary language but it would nonetheless have done a lot more for me if they or their proofreader knew the difference between ‘its’ and ‘it’s’. However I will repress my inner third-grade grammar teacher and say that they were going on about house flies and geckos and things, and how while I know about claws and sticky suction cups, I still think walking on the ceiling is magic–I might accept ceiling-walking in house flies but geckos are too big–which is perhaps on the list of Why I Write Fantasy. . . . And about the way water striders walk on water. But I didn’t know this:
“If by chance the water strider did break the water tension and take a plunge, it would not be able to dry off with a bug-size towel. At this size, surface adhesion forces would keep the towel stuck to it. . . . It would also be impossible for the bug to read a book by the pool, since once the pages were scaled down to bug-size, surface adhesion would keep the pages stuck together.”
http://invsee.asu.edu/nmodules/sizescalemod/unit4.htm
Cool. All right, I amuse easily, and I never got past basic biology and basic chemistry in high school.+ And if I get this entry done before I sag forward and fall asleep with my head resting on my keyboard, I’m going to go read What’s That in Your Dog Dish? and biofilms. Biofilms?
+ I managed to take Environmental Science my final year of high school–yes, we did have Environmental Science back then, although only just barely–which involved falling in rivers, being charged by moose, etc.
† No, really. Can’t bear to. They live longer on the plant! I think the one occasion I ever seriously raided the garden at the old house was when Peter’s elder son was getting married and they had the night-before party there. And now . . . feh. Although Mme Gregoire is going to be pretty amazing in about a week.
