Sphere: Cool Summer Meals

Keep Cool Summer Meals

Sphere Magazine, August 1974

• Rice-Bean Medley Menu
• Rice-Bean Medley
• Cheese Triangles
• Relish Tray
• Choco Peanut Butter Freeze
• Iced Tea

• Cold Reuben Menu
• Cold Reuben Platter
• Spicy Rye Crisps
• Fresh Fruit Sundeas
• Beer Or Iced Coffee

• Tuna Salad Menu
• Tuna Salad Plate
• Marinated Vegetables
• Rolls & Butter
• Coffee-Peach Cream Pie
• Lemonade

Cold Reuben Menu

“When time is important and the heat has you beat, look to these three summer menus for a time saving, cool solution.”

Rice-Bean Medley Menu at top right. Tuna Salad Menu on bottom right. Cold Reuben Menu on left.

I like some of these recipes, just not necessarily together for one meal. I think rice, beans, sausage, cheese, peanut butter & chocolate for one menu would be a bit heavy.

Marinated Vegetables

Coffee-Peach Cream Pie, with a cinnamon-graham crust & a filling of marshmallow creme, coffee liqueur, whipping cream & fruit

Sphere: Chocolate Chip Ice Cream

Chocolate Chip Ice Cream

Kids Cook

Sphere Magazine, August 1974

You'll need unflavored gelatin, evaporated milk, whipping cream & an ice cream maker for this summer recipe. It sounds worth trying!

Sphere: Sprightly Lemon Recipes

The Sprightly Lemon

Sphere Magazine

August 1974

• Lemons Through History
• Cooking With Lemon Juice
• Zeste & Ziste
• Scallops Meuniere
• Veal Round Steak Piccata 
• Creamy Lemon Meringue Pie
• Citrus Freeze
• British Lemonade
• Lemon Glazed Pound Cake
• Sea Slaw (Crab salad)

Scallops Meuniere, Veal Round Steak Piccata, Creamy Lemon Meringue Pie, Citrus Freeze

British Lemonade, Lemon Glazed Pound Cake & Sea Slaw

Cooking With Lemons

Refreshing lemon recipes for spring & summer menus

Tutti Frutti at Leopold's: Savannah, GA

Leopold's Ice Cream

212 East Broughton Street

Savannah, Georgia 31401

Phone: (912) 234-4442

For the past couple months, I had been dying to try tutti frutti ice cream. This was due to watching an Ozzie and Harriet rerun about tutti frutti. I checked my cookbooks and all over the internet for either a recipe to try or a store that carries it. I came across many people in a similar pickle, such as Trevis Rothwell; his piece about tutti frutti rang true for me. Plus that helped me narrow down what ingredients tutti frutti is really supposed to contain.

Most of the ice cream shops suggested on other sites were in the North East, which wasn't very helpful to me. Eventually Google lead me to Leopold's Ice Cream in Savannah, Georgia (You'd think I'd notice the commenter on Trevis' page suggesting Leopold's, but I didn't see that until today. Go figure). Leopold's Ice Cream is only 2 minutes from Paula Deen's Lady and Sons restaurant on West Congress Street; so don't worry if you get a little lost.

Leopold's is set up like an old fashioned ice cream parlor. You order ice cream at the front of the store and then go down to this end to pay. All the employees were helpful, friendly and knowledgeable about the menu. Even with the heavy post-Christmas traffic, the employees managed to keep the line running smoothly and quickly.

This ice cream parlour also serve sandwiches, sundaes, limeades and cupcakes. The limeade was delicious. It was sparkling water and hand squeezed limes. The employee making my limeade offered a choice of flat or sparkling water. Next time I plan to order a chicken salad sandwich and a huckleberry sundae. You can find more menu items on Leopold's full menu and their ice cream flavor list 

My picture of tutti frutti didn't come out clear enough. So here's a pic of tutti frutti and some other flavors from the Leopold's website. Leopold's tutti frutti has dried candied fruit (pineapple, red and green cherries), nuts and rum. I don't know if there was banana in the ice cream or if the flavor of the nuts made me imagine that. The ice cream is pink from strawberry coloring, although the ice cream isn't exactly strawberry flavored. It's much better than that. You'll have to taste tutti frutti to see what I mean.  If tutti frutti doesn't appeal to you, the coconut ice cream mixed with coconut flakes is your best bet. 

Side note: There is a small yellow line across the street from Leopold's, right on the corner. Don't park there. You will find a ticket on your car (even though you were only inside Leopold's a few minutes), because that is not part of the two hour parking. Oops.    

Butterscotch And Biscuits

As I said in a previous post, I have been craving butterscotch like crazy. What tipped me from "butterscotch sounds nice" to "MUST HAVE IT NOW" was buying the so-so Butterscotch Krimpets last year. This week I finally got to splurge on high quality ingredients to make three butterscotch recipes:

Butterbeer Ice Cream Sandwiches from Cherry Tea Cakes

Butterscotch Brownies with Brown Sugar Frosting and Pecans from Caramel Potatoes

Ruth's Diners Mile High Biscuits from Deals To Meals

A couple of tips before you start these recipes:

- The brownies, ice cream and frosting require making hot caramel. These desserts are best made when small children are not underfoot. You cannot walk away from the stove for just a minute.  Don't stand too close to the stove, because hot caramel splatters easily. You will need to have every ingredient pre-measured or the caramel will burn / or harden.
- It took me two tries to make the Brown Sugar Frosting. The first time, I followed the instructions to boil the caramel. The caramel became dark and chewy. It had to be thrown out. The second time, I took the pan off the stove as soon as a few bubbles appeared, instead of letting it boil further. Then I followed the rest of the steps to the letter. That batch of frosting turned out perfect. I don't know if it's my stove temperature or if I misunderstood the recipe. Either way, the frosting and the brownies are to die for!
- I don't have an ice cream maker yet. So the Butterbeer Ice Cream didn't come out completely smooth, even when I followed another website's instructions to stir the freezing ice cream every hour to break up the ice crystals. I had expected that to happen, with or without the stirring. But the flavor was on point. So I will reuse this recipe when I finally get my ice cream maker. The recurring comment in the AMW family was "It doesn't have enough butterscotch flavor. It's really good, though." Next time I'll double the amount of caramel in the recipe. It was also suggested that I add bananas and pecans, so I'll include those, too.
- I didn't bake the shortbread cookies from the Butterbeer Ice Cream recipe, since I was already making brownies.
- Let me tell you how good the Butterscotch Brownies are. On their own, it's like having shirtless Jeff Goldblum show up at your door. With the Brown Sugar Frosting, it's like shirtless Jeff Goldblum came to your house and said "I hope you don't mind, I brought my friend Craig Ferguson along."'
- I bought a bag of Hershey's butterscotch chips for the ice cream. The chips tasted too much like Brach's Maple Nut Goodies. I left those out of the ice cream mix.
- Mile High Biscuits are the first flaw-free biscuits I've ever made. Seriously, don't skip the advice to use cold butter and refrain from overhandling the dough. Preheating your oven and preportioning your ingredients are crucial here, too.
- Don't cheap out on the ingredients. Normally I have fat free milk, some sort of buttery spread and maybe some dry coffee creamer packets on hand. But for these three recipes, I bought high quality European butter, full fat milk, heavy whipping cream and real vanilla. I think it made a huge difference in the taste and textures.

Vanilla I-Scream Cone Pop Tarts

Received this in my email:

Limited Edition Vanilla I-Scream Cone

"Vanilla ice cream-flavored filling surrounded by a waffle cone-flavored crust, topped with chocolatey icing and rainbow sprinkles. Freeze 'em and you'll be screamin' for more."

Pop Tarts website

Lesson Of The Day: Black Friday

If you're like me and (1) have a huge sweet tooth and (2) usually refuse to venture out on Black Friday, learn from my mistakes. I really should have stocked up on sweets, drinks and junk food before today, which is Black Friday. I was down to a little bit of milk and a boxed cake mix with peppermint frosting that did not taste like the package promised (blech!). So I convinced myself that, yes, a carton of ice cream was worth a trip out. Bought the lowest price ice cream, took it home and went "Ugh, this tastes nasty. Why did I buy a cheapo brand ? I should have splurged on a better brand of ice cream." The only saving grace was that I'd also picked up decaff tea, a Fannie May Mint Meltaway and a Russell Stover Dark Chocolate & Coconut Cream Santa. Not gonna let this happen again next year.

Raw Chocolate-Almond Ice Cream

I am in a very peaceful mood today. Two reasons: I was on a five hour writing jag last night. I managed to get four chapters of a story written. Yay! And I made raw chocolate-almond ice cream from a Raw Food Living recipe. When I was writing, I kept thinking "This is great! Three chapters! Now four! And sweet homemade ice cream in the morning!" If you haven't guessed it, I'm still bouncing off the walls at the prospect of getting two or three more chapters written today. But enough about the story writing. On to the ice cream!

This is the original recipe from Raw Food Living:

Chocolate Ice Cream

For all you chocolate lovers out there, this one's for you! I actually used cacao powder in place of the cocoa powder. I think carob powder or finely ground cacao nibs would work well too.

Ice Cream Recipes
Ingredients:

1 3/4 cup cashews or pieces
1 3/4 cups purified water
1 cup maple syrup
2 tsp vanilla flavor
1/4 tsp almond flavor
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

Directions:
1. Combine all ingredients in a blender.
2. Pour into an ice cream maker and freeze according to instructions.

The adjustments I made:
1 cup of almonds, ground up on the ice crush setting on my blender
1 cup tap water
2/3 cup Wholesome Sweeteners Organic Blue Agave Vanilla Flavored Syrup
1 1/4 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp Cook's Pure Chocolate Extract
1/3 cup Hershey's Natural Unsweetened cocoa powder

-I knew maple syrup wouldn't go over well with the AMW family, hence the change to vanilla syrup. I switched to almonds because that's what I had handy.

-Before pouring the vanilla syrup, I sprayed my measuring cup with cooking spray. I saw that on Martha Stewart the other day. It made pouring and later cleaning up much easier!

- I should have used a food processor instead of a blender. My blender made the almonds powder fine, but not the buttery consistency I needed. The ice cream came out creamy and absolutely delicious, except for the subtle almond powder grit. Maybe I'll use almond butter next time ?

- Lacking an ice cream maker or large metal bowls (as I've seen recommended elsewhere), I grabbed the top pot of a double boiler, lightly sprayed it with cooking spray and poured in the ice cream batter. I covered the top with aluminum foil and left it in the freezer overnight. The ice cream scooped out quite easily today.

I was pleasantly surprised to find such a simple, tasty ice cream that didn't require eggs, milk, cream or rock salt. Definitely try this one for yourself!

*12/14 update: I made this recipe a second time, but used peanut butter instead of almonds or cashews. Total perfection! I went back and forth between "Nom nom, this tastes like Nutella!" and "Nom nom, this tastes like a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup!"

Random Note Of The Day: Black Fruit Cake

Today I discovered that black fruit cake and Starbucks Mocha Frappuccino ice cream together = the best dessert ever. I'm always looking for new recipes to try, so share your favorite unusual desserts : )

Godiva Ice Cream Parlor Truffles

I received this email from Godiva Choclatier today. If any of you are getting married, please use these for centerpieces & invite me, okay ?

IN-STORE SAMPLINGS
7/3 - 7/9
Limited Edition Ice Cream Parlor Truffles

Wendy's: Frosty-cino & Coffee Toffee Frosty

I received this Wendy's ad in my email. I want to try one of these tomorrow at lunch:

Frosty-cino
"It's our irresistible, real dairy Frosty with coffee syrup from real-brewed coffee. We hand spin it, top it with real whipped cream and drizzle with chocolate to create an exciting, deliciously different Frosty Shake."

Coffee Toffee Twisted Frosty
"We start with our irresistible, real dairy Frosty and add coffee syrup made with real-brewed coffee. Then we mix in chocolate-covered toffee candy made in old-fashioned copper kettles to create a rich, indulgent treat."

Dairy Queen's Sweet Deals

Confession time: I love eating at Dairy Queen. My favorite way to spend the day is a trip to the local used book store, followed by crossing the road to Dairy Queen to eat their chicken strips and read my books.

So of course I was excited to hear about Dairy Queen's Sweet Deals. It's a choice of several yummy meal pairs at 2 for $3, 3 for $4 or 4 for $5:

"Menu items include the famous Dairy Queen® cheeseburger, classic all-beef hot dog, new chicken wrap, yummy French fries, crispy onion rings, fresh salad, beverage and an irresistible sundae or cone made with the signature DQ soft serve with the curl on top."

I would go into Deal or No Deal mode for a Dairy Queen Sweet Deal. I could be persuaded to perform my famous "Yay, it's a DQ day!" dance in exchange for a tasty meal deal (What ? I like dancing and I like good food). If I won a Sweet Deal, my friends and I would show up in our giant ice cream hats (Yes, I have one. Please don't ask). After treating my friends to a delicious lunch,we'd gladly stand in front of DQ handing out coupons to other customers. So let's make a Sweet Deal, Dairy Queen. See you again soon, at my usual table!

Baskin-Robbins Soft Candy: Mint Chocolate Chip

"Our all-new Baskin-Robbins Soft Candy is the every day, any moment indulgence. Baskin-Robbins® Soft Candy is the newest way to enjoy the delicious flavors of Mint Chocolate Chip and Very Berry Strawberry ice cream anywhere, at any time! And, since they're also available in Sugar Free, they are the perfect way to indulge on your terms."

I bought a box of Baskin Robbins Soft Candy the other day. I had tried their ice cream flavored hard candies before and enjoyed them.

The box had a nice mint smell. Each piece was individually wrapped in silver foil, with the Baskin Robbins logo stamped on it. The candies were a pale green color and had tiny chocolate specks. The soft chew did not have the nice mint smell of the box. Instead, they smelled like plastic and mint. The AMW family rated them as as "really soft" and "mint flavored plastic, taffy and gum rolled into one piece."

Big thumbs down for Baskin-Robbins Soft Candy.

Arby's Mint Chocolate Swirl Shake

Arby's
896 Blanding Blvd
Orange Park, FL 32065
(904) 272-1225

"Creamy mint chocolate flavored shake with a chocolate swirl"

Today I went to Arby's to try their mint chocolate shake. It should've been a red flag when the girl making our shakes yelled "HEY (co-worker's name), I DON'T KNOW HOW TO MAKE THESE SHAKES !" What we received were two vanilla shakes with a puddle of green coloring and mint flavor at the bottom. The sides of the cups looked like someone played paintball with brown paint. Thumbs down for Arby's Mint Chocolate Swirl Shake.

Food In The News

Very hot ice cream

Street vendors

Illinois: Kid friendly food

Sources:

"Spicy ice cream hits a hot spot", by Pailin Wedel, News and Observer, USA Today, 7/3/2006

"Project to teach street food vendors a thing or two about hygiene", Express News Service, Kolkata Newsline, March 5, 2007,

"Palate Pleasing Kids’ Menus", February 16, 2007, Posted by Rob Benes on Kids Cuisine, Well Fed Network blog

Recipes from the trial run

My group from culinary class did a trial run on Wednesday of the food we'll be serving at our final presentation dinner in 2 weeks. Our event has a jazz theme. I will post the pictures of the food and our table set up soon. The food was absolutely
out of this world : D Here is what we made:

Salad

A little bit of heavy whipping cream and white pepper made the dressing even better.

Cajun spiced chicken

Creole Meuniere Sauce

The sweetness of the creole sauce is a perfect match for the spice of the chicken.

Bourbon Street New York Strip Steak

American–style red beans and rice

Our next batch will have andouille sausage in it.

Bananas Foster

The dessert was heavenly. I normally think bananas are too gross to eat, but in this dessert they tasted amazing : D Ask my team members how many times I said this morning, "*sigh* I want another Bananas Foster."

Sources:

Warm Nut Encrusted Goat Cheese Salad with Bacon Lardons, Emeril Lagasse, 2003 Show: Emeril LiveEpisode: Bistro Cooking, Food Network

Cajun Spiced Chicken, Submitted by: Jennifer Owen, AllRecipes

Pecan-crusted Trout with Creole Meuniere Sauce and Brabant Potatoes, Emeril Lagasse, 2003, Emeril LiveEpisode: In a Nutshell, Food Network

Bourbon Street New York Strip Steak, Submitted by: Mark Daniel, AllRecipes

American-Style Red Beans and Rice, Submitted by: LAURENB222, AllRecipes

Bananas Foster II, Submitted by: BUTTERMEBREAD, AllRecipes