Darienne

How about habaneros? very fruity and floral, but of course kick-ass hot. One solution: last year over in the "Cooking from 'Fiesta at Rick's'" topic, I made this fantastic Yucatecan Ceviche recipe, which used habanero chile in the marinade. The genius of the marinade was this: you added a halved, de-seeded habanero to the citrus juice for a short time and then discarded the pepper, using only the juice in the marinade. Result: all the flavor and complexity of the habanero with only some of the heat (your choice how long you let it steep). Perhaps the same technique could be used for sorbet or ice cream. It wasn't the heat...it was the taste.

Jalapeno sorbet is tasty but I've never used jalapeno in ice cream... maybe I should try. Sweet corn ice cream is nice. I like it with blueberry pie or crisp. I might get to the corn ice cream...but maybe not too soon. Tri2cook: I think you are correct. Piloncillo for white is a major change. I don't think I'll try the original recipe anyway. To tell the truth, we didn't even like the avocado ice cream all that much. We ate it all, but it would never be a favorite. Furthermore, DH does not like sorbets...just creamy ice cream. French Canadian background with all that that entails in sugar and cream. We are just too wedded to the North American version of ice cream. What I have done, however, is made chocolate sauce for the ice cream with various hot pepper types in it. That I like.

Are you not about a week late for PEI?

Short discussion with DH. The Jalapeno-Lime Ice Cream went into the sink. That bad. Made some Nougat Ice Cream today. Delicious. My name for it. It's basically a cornstarch-based vanilla ice cream with all kinds of nougaty inclusions at the end. And I guess it could be called my own recipe now because it has nothing in common with the original which called for ricotta. One of my inclusions is two-year soaked in brandy and rum chopped fruit which was originally slated for a Caribbean Black Cake which never got made. It has been used in a lot of other desserts. Yum I'm thinking about adding one egg to my cornstarch base.

Sounds delicious. I have a pound of roasted zucchini slices in the freezer. It's too late for the poaching, but I could heat them with the dressing. Sounds like my kind of dish.

I don't have any cheesecloth, but I use a couple of layers of 'sheer' curtains which someone passed on to me. So far, I have found them to work for all draining and squeezing jobs. They also keep off the insects of summer, including the plaguing fruit flies. I sewed up a pillowcase of sorts from one of them into which my large fruit bowl fits quite nicely. Of course they wash and dry like a dream. They are doubtless some 70s kind of synthetic seeing as they are at least 30/40 years old.

They look incredible. These were baked, yes?

New ice cream made: Jalapeno & Lime Ice Cream, recipe by Keeley Cochrane. Changed it to a certain extent. Used Piloncillo instead of white sugar and used my usual cornstarch base. Otherwise it was the Cochrane recipe. OK. Brown sugar is sweeter than white sugar, so it should have been sweeter than the original recipe. Now I do NOT have a sweet tooth, but even I found it lacking in sweetness which was not compensated for by anything else in the mixture. Of course, DH found it not sweet enough. It was too late for reconfigure the base as it was then in the ice cream maker, so after some hurried cogitation and discussion with my life partner, DH, we agreed that I should add some maple syrup. It worked fine. The jury is still out about the finished product and its taste. It's good...but it's not good enough. Which may be my doing...or may be the recipe itself. Any wise comments gratefully received. In the meantime, I'll keep looking. I didn't find any other useful ice cream recipes with jalapeno and lime in them online.

They look lovely. You must be young, energetic and slightly crazy. Baking at 10,000 feet is not simple I imagine. I have enough confusion trying to bake and cook at 4500 at times. (We live at near sea-ish level.)

Amazing sequence. As one of the appended comments said...I too was mesmerized watching the sequence. Thanks.

Thanks for the information about the foam. Are there disposable beer cups which are small enough I wonder. I'll check it out. I like the Dixie cup idea. Check it out too. No idea of where to buy them. Oh...a party place perhaps. Thanks again, PanaCan

Puerco Pibil. The favorite dish of the character Johnny Depp plays in Once Upon a Time in Mexico. In the first half hour of the movie, he orders the dish three times. He always invites the other person at his table to try his delicious Pibil. Then he gets up, walks off and shoots the cook, in order to maintain 'balance'. No, don't ask me. The director, Roberto Rodriguez co-produced the movie, directed it, composed the music, and put his recipe for Puerco Pibil onlin where I found it. And I've cooked it three or four times now and just love it. Johnny Depp is an interesting actor and Salma Hayek is incredibly beautiful. Plus it starred Antonio Banderas, Willem Dafoe, etc. So finally I borrowed the movie through the library and I have just watched I guess about half an hour of it and couldn't take any more. End of story, I guess.

"I was preparing a "scandinavian" extended family dinner (far from the far east) for the home welcoming of my son, from over half a year in Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, India, Laus, and -I cannot remember where else. After the meal I felt a cake did not suit for dessert as it was a bit heavy-quiches, salads with cheeses in and lox etc plus summer heat and this forum led me to these pom/vodka ices for dessert." These dessert ones. They were/were not in popsicle format? Served in dishes? Thanks. I'm thinking ahead for the dog crowd (not the dogs For them we bought a wading pool today )I'm still going to look for 3-5 oz plastic cups mentioned by PanaCan for my dog crowd...or maybe foam ones which I could slit on the diagonal perhaps for easier unwrapping...or something...

Thanks, Lior. I'm interested in your serving dishes/containers/etc What do you suggest? Ground baked liver would do it. Too many dogs actually to do it at all. Might start a to-do.

Update of sorts: accidentally found the thermometer in question (minas6907) this morning. Did not get rid of it. Now I remember what happened. I dropped it and the red fluid in the glass scale separated and would not go back together again. Now that it has sat for well over a year, the fluid is back together and I am going to test it in boiling water. If it can be made to work by adding or subtracting numbers, that will give me 4 different thermometers, not by design, but still very handy for all occasions.

No more duct tape for this woman...it's Gorilla Tape now. Like duct tape but much stronger and stickier. Costs more too. Get yourself some; you'll never regret it and you'll never go back to plain old duct tape. And to list what I have done with it...would be easier to list what I haven't done with it. DH hates my way of repairing stuff. Buckshee he says. Done I say. Go for it, Heidi.

Quick answer: no.

My hands can no longer make a regular can opener work and we have now killed two electric can openers (or they just died), the latest one being quite expensive, a Cuisinart. Our daughter gave me this strange little can opener from Lee Valley for Christmas, only $14.50 CDN and it's incredible and I can use it. Oh yes, I'm old. Nogent Super Kim Can Opener. #EV123 Lee Valley catalog It doesn't look like much of anything and I couldn't think that it would work, but believe me, it's amazing and doesn't take much strength at all. ps. Lee Valley Jar Opener. #50K41.01. Amazing. Lee Valley link

I looked for my thermometer which looks like the Amazon one but can't find it...which means I have already tossed it. I found it a pain to use and broke part of it the second time used. I've been using one of those insta-read thermometer guns for over a year now. Mine is a Mastercraft, which is a Canadian brand sold by Canadian Tire, a Canadian institute of long standing. I love it. Would never go back to any other kind. The one thing one has to remember...to stir the mixture being measured just before taking its temperature. The gun takes only the top temperature. So far no problems whatsoever. Obviously no use for internal temperatures of meats. I have a couple of the long metal probe kinds of thermometers. They are a nuisance, always being in the way (for me). I have a couple of the older glass encased thermometers. They still have a function in my life...I just have to remember each time how far out of whack they are by testing them in boiling water keeping in mind at what elevation I happen to be.

I need a running start on this popsicle thingy. Do give me your proportions of this and that please. And I wish you and your pup could come too. And I hope you are both faring well. Our daughter was here over the weekend and fed part of her coconut water pop to our female who loved it.

Never thought about this before, but it does make sense. Nothing like an accident or burn to make one careful from then on. Painful way to learn.

That IS the answer!

Currently I have one mold which makes 8. In August we host a Dog Weekend and Saturday of the weekend (which turns out to be 4 days) we can have up to 25 people and 25 dogs. So I need a ridiculous quantity of popsicles should I go this route this year. I have a lot of plastic confectionery bags which are way to big for lollies and such and should be fine for popsicles. Our daughter says they buy them in Toronto in hand-formed waxed paper packets. I imagine the ones they buy are flat and not cone shaped... Might look for some new molds. Margarita pops on my mind...

Made my first post teenage popsicles. Coconut water. Daughter and her BF from Granada loved them. DH said they were one degree more fascinating than water. My question is: how do you store popsicles??? I simply stuck them in an open plastic container back in the freezer. This is not satisfactory. What do others do?

Hi PanCan, lovely tutorial. In case I just missed it...what kind of oil are you using? Thanks.