Cocaine may be a hell of a drug, but Cookies n' Creme, it's a hell of an ice cream

Woke up, checked to make sure B wasn't giving birth, then took off to Coney Island. There was a half-marathon my friend E was running in, so I was able to fly down Ocean Parkway without any cross traffic. After running 13.1 miles in the heat and humidity, all that E and her friend wanted to do was scarf hotdogs, so scarf we did at Nathan's.

I just wasn't hungry this morning, but the cherry sorbet I labored on was....good, not great, I think I went too far on the cherry brandy, which prevented the ices from setting up too firm and gave a very mild booze tickle to the nose. On the other hand, it's VERY cherry-like in a real cherry way, and where it didn't crystallize, it's so smoooove. Next time, less kirschwasser and more gelatine.

I explored further into frozen deserts today. Yesterday, I made cream anglais, the base for really solid vanilla ice cream. Pint of whole milk, pint of heavy cream, cup of sugar, 2 scraped out vanilla beans, husks and all, into the pot, brought to a simmer. The second it hit simmer, I tempered a little bit of it into 12 whisked egg yolks, then tempered the yolks into the dairy -- if you just dumped in the yolks, instant scrambled eggs. Kept whisking until it thickened, then immediately through a meal mesh strainer into an ice bath. Refrigerated over night. This in itself is an intense sauce that can be poured over pastry, bread pudding, cakes, etc, but it's real hero status is the "French vanilla" ice cream it makes when ya churn it.

But I didn't want to be so....vanilla, so yesterday I asked her what ice cream flavor she desired. She peeped, not totally proud of herself, "Cookies n' creme!" Ugh, what a low rent flavor! I guessed it was just vanilla ice cream with an oreo mix-in, so no biggie, better to keep the old lady happy then be an ice cream snob.

I got a pack of Newman-Os from the supermarket, which I never had before. They pretty much look and taste exactly like oreos, except they don't leave a fatty film in your mouth and don't give you the chemical tickle at the back of your throat. As the ice cream was churning, I pulsed the majority of the cookies in the food processor to get a nice mix of powder, small bits and medium bits. One thing of note: the vanilla 'creme' all but disappeared, powdered and bonded to the darker chocolaty bits. Weird.

So I poured the cookies into the vanilla base a few moments before it was ready to stop, and once fully incorporated, shovelled it into a container and into the freezer to set. Then I tasted the remains of the dasher and barrel....

Oh my. This is interesting. Not what I expected. This is actually really, really.....good. The 'creme' of the cookies was powdered, and then kind of decided to sing bass-harmony with the pure vanilla of the ice cream....the cookies gave a nice interesting crunch and texture to the otherwise silky ice cream, but rather than being like sand, added a nice simple cocoa note that's kind of like, ummm, a castrato singing high above the vanilla harmony. The cookies also raised the sweetness and saltiness level of the affair, making it so different than what it was before. I guess that's really are there is to it, just blenderize and mix in cookies. I gotta try this with ginger snaps, with cinnamon graham crackers, with all-chocolate Newman-Os in my special 3-Deep-Chocolate ice cream (with cocoa, milk chocolate, dark chocolate and a dash of espresso grinds), ohhh, the mind is racing. I'm writing this in the afternoon while B is asleep, I can't wait to feed her some of this, she's gonna shout, "BAMALAMA!"

Hours later: Yep, she shouted bamalama.

AM SNACK: 8:30am, snippet of cherry sorbet
BRUNCH: 11:15am, 2 hotdogs with kraut and onion, a small amount of cheese fries, 1 beer, 1.25 bowl, hunger 4/5

BIKE WATERING: 1pmish, 24 oz of water

PM SNACK: 2:15pm, cherry sorbet, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5

LUNCH: 3:30pm, asparagus risotto, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5
Oh my. This is a dish that despite the snobs that say risotto is no good if it's not just cooked, it actually tastes better the day after. More moisture gets into the grains, the starchy stocky creamy sauce gets more so, the flavors just mellow into each other, and it doesn't hurt that after last night's dinner, I hit it up with more salt to make it beg to be eaten.

PM SNACK: 4pm, 6 or so Newman-O cookies, scrapings of cookies n' creme ice cream out of the dasher barrel, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5

DINNER: 9pm, vegan singapore mai fun, a summer roll, a few dumplings, a scoop of cookies n' creme, 1.25 bowl, hunger 4/5
Ordered in food with the bulbous B.

Cookin' like I mean it

Spent part of the morning making simple syrup for sorbet. Sorbet can be relatively easy to make with an ice cream machine, but not if you ain't got no sorbet syrup. Pint of water, on the fire stir in a mix of 11 oz of granulated sugar and quarter ounce of powdered gelatin. When it's all dissolved, drop in about 3 oz of light corn syrup, bring to a rolling boil. Pour into a clean container (any stray bits will cause crystallization), chill until ready to use.

When I got home from grocery shopping, I put my barefoot & pregnant wife to work depitting about a quart of cherries, which I then simmered in a quarter inch of water to loosen them up. Ran them in the food processor into a fine puree, and in the blender I placed the pint of gelatinous syrup, a dash of cinnamon, juice of half a large lemon, and a quarter ounce of kirsch...

I pulled this recipe from my c-school text, didn't make this one in class, I think I did lime sorbet then. The recipe calls for "kirsch", which when plugged into google comes back as a cherry brandy. After food shopping, I stopped by my local liquor store in the heart of the Lower East Side, and I ask the counter guy, "Do you carry kirsch?" To which he replied, "Are you making German chocolate cake?" To which I replied, "Nah, cherry ices from scratch." "Ah," he replied, turned around and pulled out a bottle of "Kirschwasser". Something tells me that if it wasn't the L.E.S., this would not of been so easy to source. Anyway...

Poured the cherry puree into the syrup mix, and blended for a solid two minutes. Poured through a fine metal mesh into a plastic container, which removed a surprisingly large amount of cherry pulp, and into the fridge.

Was hoping to catch a yoga class with the HVS today, but an hour before our cradle arrived and I made the mistake of immediately setting it up. After some frustration, I came to the conclusion that a key piece was defective, but by then I realized class was starting in 10 minutes... -sigh- ...third time in a row I flaked on a class, you think with me not on a work schedule I'd be less flaky.

Took my time making a massive quantity of asparagus risotto, kind of merging a Batali recipe, a c-school recipe, and just kind of winging it by eyeball. It came out very creamy and pretty good, though after eating a portion I had to go seriously up on the salt. Almost as an afterthought, got some chicken breasts out of the freezer, zapped them, coated them in olive oil, chili sauce and Worcestershire sauce, light salt, and off to the grill pan, where I got some nice marks going on. After all that, just didn't have the time or the space to make creamed spinach, maybe tomorrow.

After dinner, I got the cherry sorbet mix into the freezer barrel, but even though it took on air, it was way too loose to eat, needs to set overnight. -sigh-

BREAKFAST: 7:30 am, smoothie, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5
Using what was left: a very ripe banana, good yogurt and good milk, heavy on blueberries and cherries, fresh ground flax, vanilla, salt, sugar. Came out good but without the grape and kiwi, definitely not as well-rounded.

I wonder how many calories are in this thing. Less than 3 hours later, I got hungry again...

BREAKFAST 2: 10:30am, toasted sesame bagel with whipped cream cheese, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5

LUNCH 1: 1:15pm, pasta with olive oil, butter, Worcestershire sauce and garlic, snippet of cookie dough, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5

LUNCH 2: 3:45pm, a couple small slices of artichoke pizza, half a diet Manhattan special, 1 bowl, hunger 3/5
I miss L's pizza, but this variation was not the best.


DINNER: 9:30pm, one and half grilled chicken breasts, reasonable scoop of asparagus risotto, small amount of crappy Wholefoods trailmix, 1.25 bowl, hunger 4/5
I'm glad I was able to cook my ass off AND resist overeating. In the past, when I cooked lots of complicated heavy food, I used the excuse to eat an extra portion. This time, I got a whole mess of extra portions into the fridge and freezer, 'cause when the bebe comes, I may not be able to take a night to cook in peace with my B as my personal dish washer...

Still no bebe

BREAKFAST: 6:30am, good granola with the good milk, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5

AM SNACK: 9:45am, apple fritter, chocolate donut, .75 bowl, hunger 4/5
I was hungry by the time break rolled around during class, and I walked over to Starbucks to get a pastry -- the street cart pastries just feel like rocks in my stomach. A single pastry didn't seem like enough, but 2 seemed excessive, but I went for it. The total calories according to the signage: a little less than 900 calories. For breakfast!

I know McDonald's breakfasts are famous for going up towards 2000 to 3000 calories, but my 900 calorie snack just seemed....excessive. This dissonance caught in my craw as I road my bike to the restaurant -- 2 hours later I still felt pretty full.

PM SNACK: 2pm, 2 pieces of sharp provolone
We're changing up the cheese on a salad, this cheese is totally rocking.

PM SNACK: 3:45pm, small amount of matzoh farfel, baby carrots and peanut butter, snippet of cookie dough .25 bowl, hunger 4/5

DINNER: 7pm, pork bahn mi, a few bites of summer roll and taro spring roll, a spoonful of pho, water, a cup cake, 2/3 of a glass of wine, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5

MiniB a.k.a. BumpB: Electric Boogaloo

Had a good class, nice that I barely wanted to sleep during it. I get the feeling that B could pop open and spill out a MiniB at any moment, as she was due yesterday but the kid ain't havin' NONE of it! "I ain't comin' out until there is peace in the middle east, you bourgeois pigs!" Or something.

Spent a couple hours at the resto after school, L was as sweet as a lamb, even said he and the guys missed me, despite me being clumsy...because no compliment can go unsullied, I guess. I do miss that place, but am very happy to be chillin' with B and BumpB.

Had a low grade dinner, same pizzeria that B ate from last week before she went into labor that we now know to have been false. Maybe today's will kick off the real thang?

BREAKFAST: 6:30am, smoothie, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5
Same as the last two, minus the kiwi. Funny, I'm pulling back on the yogurt, milk, upped the cherries, upped the ice, came out much tastier. There is something to the balance of ingredients.

AM SNACK: 9:45am, 2 street donuts, .75 bowl, hunger 4/5
When looking at the cart, I wasn't looking for what was the yummiest, or what had the least calories or healthiest -- I was looking for what items would least likely give me a stomach ache.

LUNCH: 12:30pm, pork n' chive dumplings, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5

PM SNACK: 1:30pm, 1 meatball, a sprig of chicory, .25 bowl, hunger 3/5

SNICKLE SNACK: 4:30pm, fake bacon salad, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5
In the cafe of the HVS yoga studio, weird how the tempeh tasted vaguely bacony in a weird way, but oddly satisfying.

DINNER: 7pm, 4 slices of 2boots pizza with bbq shrimp, orange boylans soda, 1.25 bowl, hunger 4/5
Ordered in with B. I'm not a fan of 2boots pizza, but it is significantly different than a generic slice. The cornmeal used to keep the dough from sticking adds a certain mouth feel and crunch, and the hot pepper in the sauce brightens everything. The shrimp was shockingly....small and barnacly, but the BBQ sauce it sported was vinegary in the right strength, a good match against the spicy sauce. Overall, still over-cheesed and oddly bland despite all that was going on.

EVENING WATERING: 8pm, quart o' NYC tap, represent!

Kelly & Ping SUCKS

Good chill day with the B. After a night of weird dreams about L and the restaurant's produce purveyor, had a doc appointment -- B and MiniB are all good and ready to drop whenever it happens. Went to a crappy but convenient lunch, saw a bad movie, did a slow wander back home. Cooked nice dinner. Ah, maybe it won't be so bad if I never go back to work and the bebe delays coming until it's 18 and ready for college....I keed, I keed. C'mon, bebe!!

BREAKFAST: 9am, organic chex with organic good milk, 3 cookies, .75 bowl, hunger 4/5

LUNCH: noon, 2 veg dumplings, 2 spring rolls, a small tasting of pad thai, a small tasting of sesame noodles, .25 bowl, hunger 4/5
Went to Kelly & Ping with B after our doc appointment, I didn't want to but she did. I don't like the faux counter service -- it's set up like a full service restaurant, but they make you do counter service, it's annoying. On top of that, the food is overpriced and shitty. I ordered an $8.50 "Dim Sum Lunch Box" and form the looks of it, was worth closer to $5, just not that much food. On top of that, the small lump of sesame noodles were clearly prepared days ago, with the sauce dried out and tacky on the noodles. I tried to eat a "shumai", but what is traditionally filled with shrimp, pork or chicken tasted like....tuna? I spit it out, not sure if it was good or not. I tried eating some of B's veg pad thai, but it tasted underseasoned and a little bland. Wow, this place just sucks from begining to end!

PM SNACK: 1pm, popcorn, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5
Popcorn with B and the the B2B at the movies!

PM SNACK: 4pm, half a vegan ice cream, .25 bowl, hunger 4/5
We stopped at Stogo for a cold desert, very underwhelming in the flavor department. They need to use refined sugar, palm oil and baked good that are less crumbly and more rich,

PM SNACK: 5:15pm, 1 homemade chocolate chip cookie, hunger 4/5
Each cookie is an ounce, so to call that a quarter bowl would be pushing it...

DINNER: 7:30pm, pan seared sea scallops over mushroom brown basmanti rice, salad, 3 cookies, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5
K came over, fun to cook something nice, but really easy. Rice just needed a reheat, cookies already made, B made the salad. Quickly dredged the big ol' scallops in wholewheat flour, salt and cumin then into really hot oiled pan. Once a little brown on one side, flipped and into a 350 oven for about 3 minutes, came out perfectly tender and flavorful. While they rested, reduced some old white wine in the pan, then hit it with a wallop of butter and minced fresh dill and another dash of salt -- a simple pan sauce with a nice color and contrasting flavor. Just needed some stock to thicken it, but the left over floury bits in the pan did some work for me.

Life on Hold

After getting out of the house briefly to go up to Westchester for a BBQ and a nice bike ride to get home, felt like spending the day with Big B today, she's soooo pregnant still. We sat around and snuggled, took a walk in the neighborhood for a slice o' pizza, cooked up some very stocky rice and cookies. -sigh- I know I need to eat less, but it's sooo comforting!

BREAKFAST: 9am, smoothie, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5
Repeat of Saturday's smoothie: good yogurt, good milk, banana, grapes, cherries, blueberries, kiwi, freshly ground flax, salt, sugar, ice. If it was more in season, the sugar would not be necessary to balance.

AM SNACK: 11am, matzoh farfel, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5
B massacred the farfel yesterday, so it was either eat it or let it be in danger when B woke up...

LUNCH: 1pm, 1 slice of streetza, small softserve cone, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5

PM SNACK: 3pm, baby carrots, small piece of stinky cheese, .25 bowl, hunger 4/5

DINNER: 6pm, brown basmanti rice cooked with stock and mushroom, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5

EVENING SNACK: 9pm, homemade chocolate chip cookies, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5

My stock brings all the Bs to the yard

BREAKFAST: 9:30am, matzoh farfel, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5
Not the lightest breakfast I ever had. Spent the morning cooking this up, based on the chicken stock I made yesterday. Put a good heaping spoonful of chicken fat in a wok, cooked it until it stopped bubbling -- all the water and impurities cooked off. Dropped in 2 cups of shredded carrot to soft, then 2 cups of minced onion and 2 cups of chopped portabello, dash of salt. Cooked till in smelled gooood and tasted sweet. Separately, 9 cups of crumbled matzoh, poured 2 cups of fresh stock over it and mixed by hand until absorbed.

This is where my stock kinda freaked me out a little, in a good way. I had the stock in the fridge in a large pot overnight, so all the fat came to the top and congealed, making it easy to spoon off into a container for separate use. I started spooning off the fat....and it got clearer, but didn't seem to stop....I realized that the stock itself was a bit...jelly-like! This is a good, good thing. Because I used three whole chickens with all the meat (minus the breasts), my stock now has a great deal of collagen -- the stuff of bone marrow and connective tissue that is incredible healthy to eat. Best thing, it has a fatty mouth feel but ads no fat, just protein! It's too intense to use as soup base, it has to be diluted, but when cooking something like risotto at full strength...oh my!

OK, OK, I soaked the matzoh while the salted veg was cooking off. Turned off heat, dumped soaked matzoh in the wok and mixed. Dropped a scoop of the mix into a bowl of 4 beaten eggs to raise the egg's temp, so when I dumped the eggs in it wouldn't turn into scramble. Coated the whole mess in egg, then dumped a table spoon of freshly grated ginger, a full bunch of minced parsley and seasoned with salt and a little pepper.

PM SNACK: 1pm, 2 ears corn with butter and salt, .5 bowl, hunger 3/5
Bought some corn yesterday, just curious. Good, not great.

LINNER: 2:30-6:30pm, corn chips, assorted dips, 2 thin slices of a large sammich, 2 hot dogs, 1 hamburger, 2 beers, water, 1 small canoli, a snippet of pepperoni, 1.5 bowl, hunger 4/5
Visited an old friend and her new husband up in Westchester, while B continued to bake the bebe. It was good to get out of the house and see some peeps. It's always weird when I go up there, really feel the difference between us 'city folk' and them 'suburb folk'. Still, some of my friends are newly pregnant, so a whole lotta bebe tawk was going down. I split at 6:30 feeling a bit bloated and achy. I wisely took my bike on the train up there, so instead of just turning around on the train, road down to Yonkers and took the train from there. I love biking. Freedom. Nice route, maybe take the HVS up there for our megaride this summer...