Food Friday: The Final Icebox Pie

When I promised icebox pie recipes for every Friday in August, I hadn't anticipated how often I would screw up my pies.  But that is exactly what I did.  Lemonade pie turned out best and my mom made that one.  Sigh.

We ate my failures and that included my final pie, a tribute to the Baskin Robbins jamocha fudge flavor.  This pie has coffee and chocolate, two of my favorite things.

The Ingredients

- a gallon of coffee or espresso chip ice cream, softened

- 2 cups whip cream

- jar of chocolate fudge sauce

-  1/4 cup sliced almonds

- chocolate crust (or homemade crust)

Place the softened ice cream in the crust and place in the freezer for at least 6 hours.  

Then spread slightly warmed fudge on top.

Note that I screwed that up again.  Freeze again and serve each slice with sliced almonds and a dollop of whip cream and a cherry on top.

Still want to make some icebox pies?  Internet, I let you down in August but other folks are making a success of icebox pies.  You should try these Southern Living recipes, which look awesome.

Your Weekly Bouquet

Each week, I pick myself some zinnias from the garden and make a fresh bouquet or two.  For the next few weeks, I'll be posting a picture of the week's bouquets.

 That's happy!

Space for all that Deodorant

In the event that you are running short on deodorant, roll on by our house and JT can hook you up.  He'll open his freshly painted closet door.

And a bevy of odor protection assistance will be yours.

His stash of stink guard is inexplicable, but at least he has a new closet with plenty of shelves on which to store it.

T was the designer and primary laborer for this project, which finds the boy with plenty of space to store his baseball gear, his shoes, his socks, and all the other detritus of adolescence (seriously, WTF with all the deodorant, kid?).

Bigfoot

JT has a rather rich fantasy life centered on the activities Bigfoot so when T and I sighted this silhouette of Sasquatch, we knew it was an opportunity not to be missed.

At this point, the real question is when this item comes to live with us in the backyard.

Harvest Season

The garden is in full bloom these days, filled with lush green plants doing their thing.

I'm having my greatest success with cucumbers and cherry tomatoes.

And the zinnias, of course.  Each week I pick a new bouquet to enjoy for the week.

Though we are still two weeks from the arrival of students, school meetings start this week.  I can feel the summer fading away as schoolwork rises to the forefront of my concerns.  But I am determined to drag out the pleasures of the season.  So I take a walk through the garden each morning, breathing in the sights and the smells of summer.

Home Sweet Taco

Last weekend, JT returned home after a week in Iowa.   His taste-of-home supper was chicken tacos, of course.

He ate 8 of them and then said that he loved me.  I'll take it.

Real Life Texts with KO: Identity Politics edition

Me:  Alarming discovery: I really like Katy Perry pop songs.  Feel cool driving around in my station wagon playing her songs too loud.  Somewhere in my head, I realize that this combination is anything but cool.  Sign of old age is that I do not care.

KO:   Her songs are very catchy.  And, hey, she kissed a girl and she liked it so it's almost like you're the same person.

Me:  Now that you mention it, we DO have a lot in common.  

If you need me, I'll be at Sephora stocking up on cherry chapstick.

Real Life Conversations with Tiger: Pecking Order edition

The backstory:  Tiger the cat is more dog than cat in that he spends a good deal of time glued to my side.  He will leave my side to nap, though only in the most inconvenient of locations.  

Me:  How about I change the sheets on the bed?

Tiger:  How about you leave me alone so I can rest?

I know when I am in the wrong.

Summer Realization

As summer vacation beckons, the early morning sun helps inspire me to get moving for the last weeks of school in May and June.  Even when I am feeling exhausted, there is something about early morning light that lightens the load.  Then summer arrives and with it are dozens of unscheduled mornings.  In the summer, I often awaken early for a girl who doesn't have to go to work, usually around 7:15.  I love the quiet of the early morning, especially one that doesn't feature a requirement that I get moving to face the day.

On my last morning in California, I was up even earlier than usual for our flight home.  The horizon was dark at that hour and it wasn't until we settled in at the airport after 6 am that the sun began to rise.  As I watched the light fill the sky around the mountains, I realized that early back-to-school mornings are just around the corner.  I've grown accustomed to summer mornings featuring lovely light bathing my world.  But a quick check of the sunrise and sunset chart for September reveals a truth I know far too well: the daylight is shrinking and my back-to-school mornings will start in hazy darkness.

Though classes don't begin until September 9, as of last week I was making forays into work.  This week will feature the same; I was out of bed and drinking coffee outside by 6 am this morning.   I watered my flowers and the garden and stopped to watch the pink sun rise, a sight I never tire of admiring.  I am at work to get plans in place for my new Middle School responsibilities.  Next week, the rest of the faculty will be there to make it official: school is about to begin.  

Making plans helps to ease my anxious mind.  But there is a corner of me who wishes for my summer to last forever.  The thought of dark mornings ahead feels foreboding.  I suspect that I just need to get started in order to relieve my mind; to get into the swing of things to find both familiar comforts and new tasks that I enjoy.  And there is the consolation of sunrises to admire and enjoy.   Even so, it's a hard summer to let go.

Zinnia Season

It's August, and that means that the fresh-cut zinnia season is fully upon us.

The bouquet on the right is made in a milk bottle from Rosa Brothers Dairy, a Hanford, California, dairy that didn't get its deposit back on this bottle.  My sister gave it to me when I was in California because she knows how I like that sort of thing.  That's happy!