I SCREAM, YOU SCREAM...WE ALL SCREAM FOR ICE CREAM!

GEMMA ENJOYING A FROZEN TREAT!

Can you guess which daughter is upset that I "stole" a lick of her ice cream?

If you live in the Northeast you’ll notice we’re experiencing a bit of a heat wave. Well perhaps it’s just about everywhere…but after starting the summer with cool, wet weather it’s quite a change. We’re now in the dog days of 95+ temperatures and I don’t really like it. I often wonder what people did before air conditioners. Then I remember I was one of those people. Yes, air conditioners existed when I was younger—but no my parents couldn’t afford them so we had a fan that blew around hot air.

We have a pool in our backyard. It’s a 3 foot above ground pool that we’ve had for the past 3 years. We usually fill it with only 2 feet of water so the younger kids can feel safe in it. Of course this doesn’t sit well with the older kids who accuse us of stealing their Olympic swimming moments. Nonetheless, since this summer started off cool we never bothered to fill the pool this year. Now it wouldn’t be hard to fill the pool…it’s just that every time we thought of doing it…we kept telling ourselves “is it worth it for just 2 weeks left in the season? After all the kids are going back to school”. Then when we see the thermometer climb higher and higher we kick ourselves for not doing it.

Over the weekend I bought a sprinkler ball at CVS. The girls were excited. I was excited because it was 40% off. Yet, the ball only lasted a day. Somehow it just stopped working…I suppose it got clogged or something. A great deal turned into a lemon.

So here’s another way we try to keep cool. We make sorbet. Yes, we don’t have time to fill up the pool but there’s always time to make sorbet. My girls particularly love my watermelon sorbet. This summer’s watermelon crop was quite disappointing…and I never want to shell out more than 5 dollars for a seedless watermelon. So when prices climbed to $7.99 I was bummed out. But here’s my recipe if you can find watermelon on sale.

WATERMELON SORBET:

Ingredients
3 cups water
1 cup sugar
4 cups seeded, chopped watermelon
1/4 cup lime juice

Preparation
Bring 3 cups water and sugar just to a boil in a medium saucepan over high heat, stirring until sugar dissolves. Remove from heat. Cool.
Process sugar syrup and watermelon, in batches, in a blender until smooth. Stir in lime juice. Cover and chill 2 hours.
Pour mixture into the freezer container of a 1-gallon ice-cream maker, and freeze according to manufacturer's instructions.
The great thing about this recipe is that you can combine any fruits you like. You can make a peach sorbet, pineapple grapefruit sorbet, raspberry sorbet, lemon sorbet, orange sorbet…etc.
If you’re really ambitious you can make vanilla ice cream and add any flavor combination you like…chocolate covered pretzels, nuts and fudge, caramel, strawberry…yum.

VANILLA ICE CREAM:
Ingredients
3/4 cup sugar
3 cups half-and-half (light cream)
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
Preparation
1. In a 2- to 3-quart pan, combine sugar and half-and-half. Stir over high heat until bubbles form at pan edge (scalding, about 180°), 5 to 8 minutes.
2. In a small bowl, whisk eggs to blend. Then whisk about 1/2 cup of the hot cream mixture into eggs. Return egg mixture to pan and stir over medium-low heat with a flexible spatula-scraper, scraping pan bottom and sides thoroughly for even cooking, until custard thickly coats a metal spoon (about 190°), 8 to 10 minutes.
3. Add vanilla to custard.
4. At once, nest pan in ice water and stir custard often until mixture is cold, 10 to 15 minutes.
5. Pour cold custard through a fine strainer into a bowl, then pour mixture into an ice cream maker (1-qt. or larger capacity), or strain directly into the maker; discard residue. Once ice cream starts to freeze, you can add in any flavors (strawberries, caramel, pretzels, chocolate chips etc) Freeze according to manufacturer's directions until mixture is firm enough to scoop.
It’s delicious.

Now if it’s just too hot to deal with an ice cream maker—never fear. Get into the car and drive to the nearest McDonalds. They offer cold creamy vanilla or chocolate custard (in a cone or cup) for only one dollar. And I just found out that Baskin Robbins offers dollar cones every Wednesday. Of course your local supermarket will carry your favorite flavors too….ice cream—nothing more delicious on a really hot day!