My friend who moved to Florida a couple years ago posted about how with the heat index today, Iowa was hotter than where he was! I held out for as long as I could today, but I made my brother & husband turn the AC on for the first time this year when they got home.
I knew the day was coming. I managed to get sunburn yesterday and I’ve been longingly posting recipes for popsicles and ice cream. I even managed to finally “put my posting where my mouth is” and try a few this week!
The Vegan Mango Coconut ice cream came out more icy than creamy. Maybe because I used all lite coconut milk? I made 4 popsicles from the batch of mix but I think it would have been best to use it all for popsicles. I’m also considering taking the tubs of “ice cream” out to melt and pouring them into the popsicle molds instead. Scraping hard chunks out of the tubs is somehow not so appealing, but as a popsicle I think they are pretty close to perfect.
But I can’t do that just yet because the popsicle molds are all in use. Last night I was reading Torrey’s amazing blog and came across a few posts about her sour cherries and remembered that my friend had given me a huge bowl of them from her tree, that she had pitted all by hand. We had just talked the night before about how she was going to make a pie or some jam or something, and that I hadn’t used mine yet. She told me I better freeze them and I could use them the same way later as I would have fresh.
I sprang off the couch and spent a good five minutes searching the fridge before finding them shoved to the back corner, and sadly with a few bits of mold on a couple of them. Feeling horribly guilty (see parts about “huge bowl” and “hand pitted” in paragraph above), I tossed the moldy ones in the compost, dumped the rest into a colander and began rinsing and sorting.
With this recipe for strawberry yogurt popsicles in mind, but not bothering to go back to the computer to check anything, I think ended up with about 2 cups of cherries, a cup of non-fat yogurt, and a couple tablespoons of agave in the blender. I filled up the popsicle mold and started scrounging the cupboards for the other one I knew I had somewhere. I did finally find it, but not the handles, so I ended up using plastic spoons instead. I still had a bit more mix left, so I filled up several little 2oz condiment cups and sticking in little plastic sample spoons in for handles (both from previous caramel experiments, but that’s another story).
I had a mini-pop on the way out the door this morning and finished off my day with one of the plastic spoon ones. Strangely enough one of my main impressions is that they taste slightly… salty?? I was hoping for more of a tangy/sweet combo. I supposed the weirdness will slow me down in eating them, but that means longer before the molds are empty again. Hrm.
Anyway, between the AC and the popsicles, I’ve cooled down quite a bit and am a much happier camper.
Next time I shall report on my frozen dessert experiment of tonight, since by then it will have had time to freeze! And I’ll maybe have a chance to take a better-than-a-webcam picture of them too, but no promises there.
Now if only I could focus on my songwriting assignments… Ah, procrastination, what creative forms you take!
