Avocado Ice Cream

I’m participating in an online Iron Chef competition with friends.  Our mystery ingredient this week was avocado.  Having just received an ice cream maker attachment for my beloved Kitchenaid, I decided it was destiny that I’d seen an Alton Brown recipe for Avocado Ice Cream a couple of weeks ago.

What you need:

12 ounces avocado meat, approximately 3 small to medium

1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice

1 1/2 cups whole milk

1/2 cup sugar

1 cup heavy cream

Start by peeling and pitting your avocados.  Mix with lemon juice, milk and sugar.  Alton calls for a blender, but I don’t own one (nor does my mom, who’s kitchen I’ve taken over).

Her trusty immersion blender did just fine for us.

As with everything, Monkey was all too eager to help. 

Whisk in the heavy cream, cover and chill 4-6 hours (until it reaches a temperature of 40F or lower).

Process in your ice cream maker, according to manufacturer’s instructions. 

It sets up fairly quickly (it took mine about 10 minutes). 

You can serve immediately if you prefer soft serve.  We put ours in the freezer over night for a Sunday afternoon snack.

Mmmmm.  It didn’t taste as I expected.  While it’s not my favorite (chocolate!), I enjoyed the creamy nutty flavor.

Enjoy!

Happy 2011

“Every ending leads to a new beginning”

We brought in 2011 with a bang this year.  We received (and accepted) an offer on our old house last week.  T happened to be off this weekend, so we decided it was now or never in going to empty the place out. 

There wasn’t all that much left.  The kitchen hadn’t been packed yet.  We expected to be spending a week there later this month to finish packing it up in anticipation of moving everything to the new house.

Instead, all of our furnishings and the last of our belongings had to be trucked 200 miles and placed into storage. 

With the help of a handful of family members (and a friend of my father-in-law), we had everything loaded onto a U-Haul in a matter of hours (even our massive swingset/clubhouse!).

I thought that was pretty good, considering we still had quite a few boxes to pack. 

  

I was never in love with our house, but it was our house.  We worked hard to buy it and we put a lot of sweat and tears into that place.

We got married while living there.  We brought our babies home to it.  We have nearly 7 years of living and memories inside those walls.

I never did get to finish all of my projects.  I figure that’s normal for someone who always has a never-ending list of projects, though..  right?

And the only thing left are bare walls

years of memories

echoes of  little voices

echoes of babies crying, laughing, playing

and echoes of the pitter patter of little feet

ready for someone else to come in and make it home.

We are [im]patiently waiting for the closing on our new house.  We found a great old place in town.  Maybe we’re crazy to get into the upkeep of an extremely old house, but we both loved the place when we finally saw it in person (after nearly a year of driving by – and looking at the listing online -  saying “God, that place is perfect for us.” ). 

So, here we are in limbo.  We’ve been living with my parents for the past 2 weeks now with 4-5 weeks left to go in this portion of our adventure.  The kids have adjusted so much easier than I anticipated, though it was probably easy to adjust living here with Grammy and Pa.  The new house with just our little family might be more of an adjustment.  Luckily, children are resilient little creatures – and I’m trying to keep them busy enough they (specifically Monkey) don’t have time to dwell on it. 

So welcome, 2011 – welcome.  Here is to the start of our new adventure.

For the record - I am NEVER MOVING AGAIN!

Homemade Classmate Gifts

In trying to stick to my mostly handmade Christmas (which I’ve failed miserably at thanks to our move), I decided to try to keep gifts simple for Monkey’s classmates.  We’ve had a lot of fun putting them together!

Included in each gift are Snickerdoodles, some homemade Hot Cocoa Mix and some Magic Reindeer Dust.

I bought some cheap red plastic bowls, made tags for the top, we had a glitter party and added some curly ribbon.  Voila!

Monkey doesn’t really want to let them go.  Lucky for her I made sure we made extra of everything. 

Here’s a final look at our Charlie Brown Christmas tree.  We had a lot of fun making ornaments for it. 

I hope everyone is having all ready for Christmas and having a wonderful holiday season!

Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown

With our upcoming move looming over my head, I decided not to get a Christmas tree this year.  I even went so far as to pack up all of my ornaments and most of our Christmas decorations.  They have all since made their way (along with numerous other loads of boxes) into my parents shed for storage.

Thanksgiving came and went.  The holiday spirit started to nibble it’s way in to my soul.  BAH.  How can I not have  a Christmas tree for my kids?

What did I do?  I went into the woods behind my house (on my land, k?) and dug up a 4 foot Charlie Brown tree.  I didn’t even cut the thing.  I dug it up.

 

I even had to buy a string of lights because those are all in storage, too.  (I like to buy the strands that are green with white lights but wasn’t paying attention and picked up white.  Oops).

Ok.  We have a tree.  We have lights.  Now what? 

A trip to JoAnn’s was in order.  We found some great papers for a paper chain garland.

The only casualty during the construction of the chain was a slice of my thumb when Little Man tried to help with the paper cutter.  Better mine than his. 

Well, that’s a little better.  I should have bought more paper and made a longer chain.  Oops again.

A trip to Target got us a few $1 ornaments to add.  During the packing of some boxes last night, I found the ornaments we picked up at Santa’s Village this summer.  This week, we’ll have a crafting session to make some salt dough ornaments (especially the hand print ornaments!).

Will it be the prettiest tree we’ve ever had?  Not a chance.  But it will have been decorated 100% with love.

Now what do I do about a topper?

Cream Cheese Pumpkin Pie

With Thanksgiving coming this week, I wanted to make a twist on your traditional pumpkin pie for dinner with friends.  I found the recipe here and for once did not tweak:

I started with an unbaked pie shell (yes, it’s premade.  I’m moving and working on cleaning out my pantry/small freezer a little.  Don’t judge.)

 

I forgot to bring the cheese to room temp and was impatient, hence the clumps.  (My microwave died last week and I’ve nixed another because of the move – yes, we’re in sad shape here lately – so I couldn’t just zap it before mixing.  HA)

The cheese layer is 8 oz of softened cream cheese, 1/4 cup sugar, 1/2 tsp vanilla and 1 egg mixed together (Combine all but the egg together – then mix in your egg).  Pour into your unbaked pie shell.

Next, mix 1 1/4 cup pumpkin puree (either canned or fresh),  1/2 cup sugar, 1 tsp cinnamon, 1/4 tsp ginger and 1/4 tsp nutmeg.  Carefully beat in 2 eggs and 1 cup evaporated milk before pouring over the cheese layer. 

Bake at 350 for 1 hour and cool before enjoying.

I’d love to be able to give you a great picture of a beautiful finished pie or slice of pie.  I really would.  Instead, you’ll have to settle for the leftover pie that was demolished when Little Man discovered it on the kitchen counter.

He thought it was delicious.