This weekend's activities

[telophase]

We decided to host Thanksgiving this year, as between now and the we have a total of 2 weekends in which we are not driving somewhere to do something and One More Trip was just not happening. Which means we need to pick an area of the house each weekend we are home and clean it.

So instead we Cooked All The Things. Last year I made 6 quarts of interestingly-flavored ice cream for the ConDFw room party at FenCon. It's next weekend and 6 quarts of ice cream NEVER AGAIN. So instead we made 2 quarts of ice cream and 1 batch of paletas (Mexican-style ice pops), and will be making 1 more batch of paletas tonight.

Flavors, and note that all recipes were swiped from the Serious Eats blog based on their simplicity and you can Google them because I am too lazy to link:

Buttered Popcorn Ice Cream
Coconut Lime Ice Cream
Pineapple-Chile Paletas
Avocado Paletas

The pineapple-chile paletas are great, although the jalapenos we used turned out to be the not-really-hot kind, so it could do with an extra kick. And because I know someone will recommend it, I have now purchased Paletas: Authentic Recipes for Mexican Ice Pops, Shaved Ice & Aguas Frescas, which has a slightly more complicated recipe for them which will have a bigger kick.

We also cooked Cuban black beans and rice, and vaca fritas, from the recipe in the latest Cook's Illustrated, which is a Cuban recipe where you simmer chuck (flank steak in the original, I think), then shred it and saute it until bits are crispy, then flavor it with stuff including a bit of OJ and lime juice (to fake the tartness of Seville oranges, if you don't have access to any), garlic, and cumin, and carmelized onions. Excellent recipe, highly recommend getting your hands on a copy of the issue and trying it.

I'm reasonably sure we cooked something on Saturday, but amusing I've totally forgotten what it was.

Also, I spent my down time reading Scott Lynch's The Lies of Locke Lamora. I got it back when it first came out and never made it farther than the first couple of chapters, but after a friend posted about a blog entry he made years ago in response to someone who claimed that he's lose readers due to (a) the crude language his characters used and (b) the black middle-aged woman pirate captain in his second book because that sort of thing just isn't realistic (in a FANTASY NOVEL, people!), I figured I'd give it another try. Plus, the ebook was on sale.

When I finished it last night, I immediately bought the sequel. :)

Comments

[weirdquark]

My first reaction was "Sweet!" and I didn't want to go there for pun related reasons, but my next reaction was "Cool!" and that didn't help.

This is probably more Italian than Mexican, but for the record, we have discovered that mixing coco powder, lemon juice, sugar, and water together and throwing this in the gelato maker results in excellent sorbet.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

:D

Nice! I'll have to try that--finding non-dairy frozen desserty stuff tends to be a bit hard.

[weirdquark]

Another non-dairy thing we like involves cider, brown sugar, very ripe pears, and almond paste. If you are not an almond fan, we've subbed in salted caramel sauce to good effect too.

[golden-bastet.livejournal.com]

I had peach-sriracha sorbet a few weeks back. It goes quite well with sticky rice or coconut sorbet (or both, for that matter). mmmmmmmm~ :D

I heard Things of Good about The Lies of Locke Lamorra, but I haven't had time to sit down and read it. But the author has an LJ (scott_lynch, even) and he's pretty good about updating. So I have hope that someday it will happen.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Sounds kinda good, actually. :D