Sunday night we had a BBQ and I tried out my MIL’s ice cream maker. OH MY GOSH!!! Well, that stuff is just too good to exist which explains why it had been completely devoured within just a few moments. I’m never eating store-bought ice cream again (hmm, that might be pushing it. Just forget I said that.) Here’s the recipe that we made. It makes 1 to 1.5 quarts of ice cream (pretty much fills a 1.5 qt. ice cream maker):~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ben & Jerry’s Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Ice Cream

1 1/2 cups chocolate chip cookie dough
2 large eggs
3/4 cup sugar
2 cups heavy cream, or whipping cream
1 cup milk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Chop cookie dough into bite-sized pieces. Place in a bowl, cover and freeze. Whisk the eggs in a mixing bowl until light and fluffy, 1 to 2 minutes. Whisk in the sugar, a little at a time, then continue whisking until completely blended, about 1 minute more. Pour in the cream and milk, and whisk to blend. Add the vanilla and whisk to blend again.

Transfer the mixture to an ice cream maker and freeze following the manufacturer’s directions. When the ice cream is quite stiff (about 1 minute before it is done), add the chopped cookie dough. Be sure to wait until the last possible minute or the dough will get sticky and unmanageable. Continue freezing until done.

Makes 1 quart.

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A few weeks ago I posted that Henry was a super crabby baby. Well, I think we’ve finally figured out the magic trick to get him to cool his jets. It’s a two part trick, which makes me feel better about it taking me eight weeks to figure out what it was.

First, I cut dairy (except yogurt), chocolate, and coffee out of my diet. That helped a little bit. Then I started making sure I burped the living daylights out of him after every meal. This entails serious whomping on his back for ten minutes to such a degree that when we’re in public people start looking at me like “what is that lady doing to that poor baby??” When I sit him on my lap and he has bubbles in his tummy, he stiffens up so much that I can barely get him to bend at the waist. When he’s all done burping, he’ll sit on my lap all relaxed and happy. That’s the test.

This pretty much clears up whole charming evenings of crying (like evenings at the theater but with more drama) and we’ve discovered that he actually smiles and is quite adorable when he does so. The big downside to all this is that I have to cut half of my favorite food out of my diet, and some days one must eat ice cream, especially if one has just foolishly made it themselves. George helpfully spent all day Monday reminding me that my five minutes of bliss produced twenty-four hours of misery. Thanks, Honey!

Unfortunately, now Henry is trying to come down with another cold so that’s making him slightly crabby. No one here has a cold and I don’t know of anyone at church or anywhere that has one either so I don’t even know where he got this (the last one was from his older sister coughing on his face). Argh! Hopefully it will be gone by the time Family Camp comes around in two weeks.

In potty training news (because I know you all like hearing about poopies and peepees), Faith is doing great with numero uno and disastrous with numero dos. It’s been what, three weeks now? She has yet to get ye old pooper in the appropriate receptacle. This is not a good way to please your mother, father, or older siblings whose bedroom floor you poop on (this was yesterday). Last night George woke me up around 5 am to tell me that Faith had exploded and he needed some help with cleanup crew. Thirty minutes, a bath, and a fresh change of sheets later, we made it back to bed. This qualifies in the mother and father not pleased category.

I hope this gets sorted out soon. This is the fifth child I’ve potty trained and none of the other ones had this problem. We’ve had other problems, such as Georgie not wanting to get off the potty if his poopies wouldn’t come out and one of the older girls (I think it was Trinity) being too scared to flush the toilet afterward. Both of those were sorted out by hitting on a story that helped analogize the problem to something that they were already familiar with. I started one last night with Faith that will hopefully make sense to her. If it does, I’ll publish it in the next post (again, I’m sure you’re dying to know…).

In the meantime, if any of you other Moms out there have encountered this problem and come upon some brilliant solution (or pedestrian solution or any solution), please post it. I’d like to have this sorted out before camp as well if at all possible. I hate potty training!

Oh, for you RCCers who are going to Family Camp and are looking for cheap croc knock offs for your children to destroy (those are the foam plastic clogs that you see everywhere you look), I priced them out all over and have the results posted on my new shopping/sales blog here (there’s always some good reason to start a new web project, right?). If anyone else is interested in coupons/codes, feel free to take a look. Only a couple of posts are there right now because I just put it up last week, but if you stick your email address in the form on the right hand sidebar, you’ll get email updates for new sales.

Rachel

This is my favorite cherry pie recipe. I discovered that I have it in
my recipe folder but not on my computer, which would be problematic if
something spilled on my folder. Anyway, since I just typed it up and
have the recipe open, I thought I’d share it here in case you are just
dying to have a Cherry Pie recipe. You can also add 1T Kirsch cherry
brandy to the filling if you like. It does change the flavor a bit.
Enjoy!

Rachel

Cherry Pie 

Makes one 9” pie (serves 8 )

1/8 to 1/4 t. salt

1 c. sugar

1/3 c. flour *

3 cans (14.5 oz. each) red tart pie cherries (not cherry pie filling), drained, reserve juice

½ c. juice from cherries (you might not use all this)

¼ t. red food coloring (optional)

¼ t. almond extract (optional)

1/4 t. lemon juice

1 T. butter or margarine

Pastry for two-crust 9 inch pie (I cheat and use Pillsbury)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Combine salt, sugar, flour; mix well. Add sugar mixture to drained cherries; mix well. Stir in some cherry juice if the cherries and sugar look dry (you don’t want it to be too soupy, just mostly cherries with some juice), food coloring, almond extract, and lemon juice. Roll out half of pastry and line a 9 inch piepan. Pour cherry filling into pastry lined pan. Dot top of filling with butter. Adjust top crust, seal and crimp edges; cut slits in top crust to allow steam to escape.

Bake 50-60 minutes or until crust browns and filling begins to bubble (cover edges with tin foil for first 30 minutes to prevent over browning). Cool pie several hours to allow filling to thicken before slicing.

*Two tablespoons quick cooking tapioca may be substituted for flour. Combine sugar, tapioca, cherries, juice, food coloring and almond extract. Mix well and let stand 20 minutes before pouring mixture into pastry lined pie pan. Continue as above.

You know, the one advantage to being sick for seven weeks (I counted) is that I tend to get a lot of work done on my websites. Yesterday I spent the day working on my big Gymboree News (GNGC) site conversion that I’ve been putting off since…. February. Today I spent the day working on my Fainting Couch (TFC) upgrade I’ve been putting off since…. July.

The TFC one I think I got all done. Even better, I got the automation done so I don’t really have to do much with it for a couple months when the autoresponder messages run out. Then I’ll have to add some new ones, but my friend Jenni is putting them together so I don’t have to actually do the hard work on it. Hehe.

This morning I woke up wanting fruit for breakfast, which is odd because I’ve been eating things like bacon, eggs, and toast; sausage biscuit with egg; and chicken fried steak with biscuits for breakfast every day for weeks. See a pattern there? So I made a Tanya-style bianco, which is basically a bunch of different kinds of fruit chopped up and thrown all together in a bowl with maybe some whipped cream or granola on top. Usually quite delicious!

Today I ate mine and then got ambitious and went upstairs to go beat the garbage out of Anika’s bedroom. When I have morning sickness and the radioactive house starts bothering me, usually that means I’m feeling better. I don’t care what it looks like when I’m sick. So anyway, I went upstairs to clean and about halfway through realized that I was pooped and not feeling so hot.

Of course, leaving a child’s bedroom half clean is not a good idea because they will smell it within five seconds and immediate redistribute whatever you’ve cleaned away into a more or less uniform layer of junk reaching the far corners of the carpet. So I held myself together and finished the room. Then I went and threw up my breakfast. Hurray! After that I took a shower, made second breakfast (I’m practicing to be a hobbit) of bacon, eggs, and toast (which did not get bounced), and called my Mother for some sympathy. It worked well.

And now, just because I’m in a food mood (probably because all my favorite things currently are making me sick due to morning sickness), here is one of my very favorite recipes. The flavor from the chicken and sausage all seeps into the rice and yuuuuuummmmy. This makes a great meal for groups and family gatherings. When we went camping this summer, I made a double batch and fed 18 people (who all wanted the recipe). With the meat and a starch, it’s basically Portuguese comfort food, perfect for fall and winter.

PORTUGESE CHICKEN AND RICE WITH CHOURICO

¼ c. Olive oil
3 lbs. chicken seasoned with salt and pepper to taste (seasoning salt works nicely)
1 lb. Portuguese chorico or Polish kielbasa cut into 1 inch pieces
1 large yellow onion sliced
1 red bell pepper, cut into thin strips
1 yellow bell pepper, cut into thin strips
3 cloves minced garlic
2 c. California long grain rice
1 T. paprika
2 t. kosher salt (substitute with a bit less regular salt)
1 t. black pepper
½ c. white wine
1 16 oz. can whole plum tomatoes with juice (can use whole regular tomatoes, just slice them up a bit)
3 c. chicken stock (preferably home made, but the canned liquid kind will work)
6 bay leaves
¼ c. Italian (flat-leaf) parsley, chopped (regular parsley seems to work fine too)

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2. Heat olive oil in a large Dutch oven or heavy-bottomed, oven-proof pot over medium high heat and brown seasoned chicken pieces on all sides, about 6-8 minutes. Set chicken aside. Add sausage, onion, peppers, and garlic to pot and cook for 5 minutes. Add uncooked rice and stir, making sure to incorporate rice with sausage and veggies, and cook for 2-3 minutes. Return chicken to pot, stir in paprika, salt, pepper, and wine, and reduce for 2-3 more minutes.

3. Add tomatoes, chicken stock and bay leaves and bring mixture to a gentle simmer. Cover with a lid or foil and place in oven for 30 minutes. To serve, garnish with chopped parsley. Serves 6.

This makes enough rice for much more than six, so if you throw in a few extra chicken pieces you’ll have at least enough for eight.

Rachel

Last summer I got on a huge bread kick, and spent a month or so trying to find a good French bread recipe that I could make from home but that would taste like proper Artisan bread. After the utter failure of six different recipes, I gave up in disgust.

Well, no more! Last Tuesday our local propaganda wing.. errr… newspaper, The Oregonian, published the greatest Artisan bread recipe I’ve ever seen. Crunchy, flaky crust, soft and yummy guts. Ahhh, heaven. Plus you don’t have to knead it! I tried it last Wednesday and it came out so well that I’ve made seven more loaves since (gave away five of those).

I’ve made it so much this week that I actually know it by heart now. When I was at Hubby’s parents’ house the other day, I typed it up for his Mom and I thought you guys might like it too. I throw all the ingredients (all four of them) in a bowl in the evening and let it sit overnight. Then I make the bread the next day. Good luck!

NO-KNEAD ARTISAN BREAD

(recipe originally came from The Oregonian FoodDay, 3/13/07)

3 c. flour
2 ½ t. salt
¼ t. instant or rapid-rise yeast
1 ½ c. plus 2T lukewarm water
Little bit of cornmeal

Bread pan requirements: Use a three to six quart covered casserole dish, round or oblong. A heavy dish works best (cast iron, Corningware stone, etc. Probably not glass. I use a white ceramic-plated stoneware casserole made by Corningware.). This creates an environment in your oven that is similar to a breadmaker’s steamy clay oven and gives your bread that super-yummy crust.

1. Combine first three ingredients in a large bowl and then add water and stir well. Dough will be wet and sticky. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and let sit in a warm location (like 70 degrees-ish) for 12 to 18 hours. You’ll know dough is ready because it will bubble on top.
2. Dump dough onto a floured surface and fold over once or twice. Cover again with plastic wrap and let rest for 15 minutes.
3. Shape into a ball (or oblong roll) and pinch seam. Don’t handle dough too much. Flour a cotton dishcloth (not terrycloth) and sprinkle with cornmeal. Place dough on cornmeal seam-side down and sprinkle top with cornmeal. Cover with cotton cloth and let rise 2 to 3 hours.
4. Preheat oven to 450 degrees. While oven is heating, put pan (without lid) in oven and let both pan and oven heat up for 30 minutes or so. Remove pan (it’s HOT so be careful), pick up cloth, and roll off cloth into pan seam-side up (it kind of goes ker-plop). If it’s uneven, just shake pan a bit and it will settle in. Dough will be wet. Put lid on pan and bake for 30 minutes. Remove lid and cook for 10 to 15 minutes more until bread is golden brown. Take bread out of pan and let it cool on a wire rack. Yum!

For variations, add whatever herbs/spices or things you want. If it doesn’t work or I forgot something pertinent in the recipe, just call or email me and we’ll figure it out. First things you should check are if you’re using the right kind of dish to bake it in and if you’re using instant yeast.

Rachel

P.S. This dough seems to be pretty sensitive to humidity, so for Portland I have lessened the water and salt (that’s for flavor) as follows:

3 c. flour
2 t. salt
¼ t. instant or rapid-rise yeast
1 ½ c. lukewarm water

Try it a few times where you are and adjust as needed. If the dough is too wet, your bread will be flatter.