Late Spring Life Update

Hello my S&C muffins.  Hope the spring treated you well.  Summer is here and I'm excited as always. The farm markets are brimming. The days are long. I can stop suffocating my body in heavy clothing and shoes.  (Sundresses, sandals, and pedicures for the win!)

My little garden is in full bloom and I love to sit out here on balmy mornings and balmy evenings.  It isn’t thriving this year as much as other years.  The flora aren’t as lush as they could be (except for the sage). I am not sure why.  I planted the same plants I always plant and I am not doing anything differently in terms of care.

So what's going on lately?  It's a time of transition.  May marked two special occasions. The first was Mother's Day and the second was Mom's birthday.  For the latter this year I decided to have the family over for dinner to enjoy some of my Sunday Sauce.  

I had an unusual issue with dessert though.

Mom's not a big cake person, so I decided to make some rich cookies (these) with homemade Kahlua ice cream.  I had a new ice cream maker to make it in.

I have been using the same ice cream maker for over twenty years.  My old faithful Krups model was a wedding gift.  The past two or three times I used it, I found it was underperforming.  It was struggling to churn and I wasn't sure the chamber was holding the chill.  I decided it was time to replace it.  I thought the wisest course of action would be to buy an ice cream attachment for my Kitchen Aid mixer.  The KitchenAid motor wasn't going to break down like the small motor in the ice cream maker.  Rather than a whole new ice cream maker, I wanted a cold chamber bowl and a paddle attachment that fits with the mixer.  I saw one on Amazon.  Kitchen Aid didn't manufacture it, which I suppose was my first mistake.  

I was making the preparations to make the ice cream and the first step was to put the chamber in my freezer.  I keep the bowl in a cabinet above the refrigerator where I store a few of my specialty appliances like my kitchen torch and my pasta maker - which I keep in their cardboard boxes.  I pulled down the box with the ice cream maker and saw it was mushy and dented.  The photos on the outside of the box had peeled off down to the bare cardboard.  There were white flakes everywhere.  I noticed the boxes for the torch and the pasta maker also had some damage.

I opened the box containing the ice cream maker and saw this.

It seems my new ice cream maker exploded - or maybe it rotted.  I don't know.  I assume the white flakes are the coolant and the coolant was eating away at all the boxes in the cabinet.

I was glad I never got rid of my old ice cream maker.  I had to force it to work, but it got the job done.  We had ice cream with our cookies. 

June approached and it was time for more celebrations. My nephew, the baby of the family, graduated high school.  Watching the kids in your family grow up makes you understand the relativity of time.  I remember the day he was born.  It went by so quickly.  But how I perceive these last eighteen years is so different from how Charles himself perceives it.  These eighteen years were a lifetime. He can't remember events that happened to him eighteen years ago.  

Eighteen years ago this blog was on MySpace and I was making posts almost daily.  

Representing his new school.

We had a party of course.  Our graduation parties should focus on the kinds of foods we most want to eat. For Charles that was pizza, so we had his party at a pizza place.  Pizza was on offer for a first course, but we had chicken and pasta too.

June events continued with Father's Day.  I hosted the family for dinner.  I made cherry pie for dessert because I have to make a cherry pie every summer.

I fully intended to post some family photos along with the pie photo, but the best possible situation happened.  We were all having such a good time, I never even thought about it. I was too absorbed in enjoying the company of my family to think about how the blog needed a photo.  That’s how life should be, shouldn’t it?

Let’s not forget the best part of summer.  Pools are open and I am happiest immersed in water.

Vacation is less than three weeks away. I made my packing lists, secured my renewed passport, and bought a new raincoat.  I am almost ready to go.  My goal for this trip is to make a daily blog update while I am away rather than make one long blog post after I come home (yes, that includes daily food photos). We will see if I can do that in reality.  Perhaps I will be enjoying the company of my family too much to worry about the blog as well.