Hi All,
Made a few delicious things since I was last on, but I've become mostly preoccupied with making sorbets, and found out I can make a pretty tasty one! The first one I made was a watermelon one, after an excellent end result, today I decided to make a peach one and a strawberry one to use up some of the produce that we got on Saturday, and those ones turned out even better. Here is the recipe for the strawberry or peach one:
1 1/2 lbs strawberries, pureed and strained through a seive,
or
1 1/2 lbs peaches, peeled pitted and pureed
2 Tbsp orange juice
2 Tbsp Amaretto
1 cup Splenda
1/2 cup water
Combine water and Splenda and heat over medium until Splenda is dissolved, do NOT boil. Let cool. Once cooled, add sugar water, juice, and Amaretto to pureed fruit and chill until cool in the fridge. Process in ice cream maker about 25-35 minutes, until it reaches a soft serve consistency, put in freezer-safe container and let harden a few hours. Enjoy!
I found a recipe in Joy of Cooking and modified it to be low calorie, since I'm TRYING my best to give up ice cream (one of the loves of my life for sure) and this hits the spot and you can eat a bunch for not many calories. So I'm hoping I can keep experimenting with finding low calorie substitutes for all of my guilty pleasures, and believe me, I have quite a few! I'll keep you posted if I find any other miracle recipes.
My other foodie experience today was I went with a friend to the local grocery store with the general plan to find stuff to make lunch with, and we always have a good time there getting distracted by things we've never heard of or things that look good or who knows what. I really get a kick out of having a partner in crime that also likes to take time and explore what there is and try new foods. So after about an hour of wandering around, we came back home to make tortilla pizzas, a favorite of ours for the low calorie-ness of it all, and the fact that you can stick just about anything on there with cheese and you're bound to have something tasty. So our creations are posted in the last pic above, mine is in the foreground, I made a pizza with garlic and herb laughing cow cheese, pizza blend shredded cheese, roasted garlic, onion, heirloom tomatoes and basil from the backyard. DNA's was laughing cow cheese, pizza blend cheese, green onion, heirloom tomato, and pork chorizo, both were tasty...lunch mission accomplished!
The last thing I have to share from this weekend is a recommendation for a SERIOUSLY delicious dessert I had yesterday in Phoenix, if you are ever in the area! It can be found at the Four Peaks Brewing Company, www.fourpeaks.com, and it is called the Stoutamisu. Oh my gosh, so this dessert is comprised of chocolate cake, ladyfingers soaked in stout, layered together with this amazing chocolate cream, and of course the chocolate shavings on top don't hurt either! You fellow chocoholics would truly appreciate this dessert! It sound's like it would be really heavy too, but it was much lighter than expected but still moist without being soggy and the flavor was spectacular. You get a hint of the stout, but not any sort of bitterness associated with beer and it makes for a really nice complement to the chocolate cake and cream. Really, I can't wait to tear into another serving of it next time I get a chance. We also tried one of their award-winning beers, the Hop Knot (definitely not bad considering I'm not really a beer person) and we tried the pizza (good crust!) and I would definitely say it's worth trying if you enjoy microbreweries and good bar food.
That's all for tonight, more food geekery again soon!
Elyse
