My favorite ice cream

Ice cream is one of my favorite things...unfortunately, there are very, very few stores that offer somewhat healthy ice creams.  The best solution is, of course, to make your own! DIY! <--one of my favorite acronyms.

This recipe is not only loaded with healthy fats, but it's also chocolate flavored! What could be better than that? 

Gently modified from Sally Fallon's Nourishing Traditions

3 egg yolks from pastured hens

1/2 cup pure maple syrup

1 TBS homemade vanilla extract (there is a recipe in one of my previous posts)

1 TBS corn starch

3 cups cream from pastured cows (raw if possible, but NOT ultrapasteurized)

1/4 cup cocoa powder

In medium bowl, beat egg yolks together until smooth.  Blend in next four ingredients.  Once blended, remove 1/2 cup of the mixture and place in a saucepan over low heat.  Add the cocoa powder and whisk until completely incorporated.  Place cocoa mixture back into original bowl and combine.

Next, follow the instructions on your ice cream maker and within no time you'll be eating a decadent, chocolate-y treat! 

It's been awhile...

Hey there, folks! It's been a little while since my last post, and I am blaming it all on extreme busy-ness. There has been so much to do around here. I finished canning all of my tomatoes for salsa, picked and thrashed the lettuce seed heads, finished one Christmas-related knitting project, washed and scoured blue-faced leicester fleece as well as half of a fleece of polypay, and started a new knitting project for myself. Among all of that fun stuff that I did, I also wiped myself out with a week-long bout of gastroenteritis from (I am guessing to be) a stomach virus. So yes, I've been very busy.

I am now only working three days a week, which leaves lots of time for doing soul-preserving tasks like baking more, spinning, and knitting.  Boy, have I ever needed it! After a summer of extremely stressful waitress work, the cool weather has brought along the "slow" season and I am finally able to work less. Spinning has brought about a new excitement for me as well:  dyeing! On one of the days that I was feeling moderately well during my sickness, I went out in the rain and collected a huge bucketful of poke berries.  Good thing it was raining too, because my hands were quite the shade of purple when I finished! Tonight I plan on mordanting my washed/scoured polypay fleece and then tomorrow I'll get to dye it.  Michael is currently outside in the dark mashing the poke berries into juice for the dyeing adventure.

I am wishing I had some pictures right about now, because I did a TON of baking and cooking today.  The list consists of:  cinnamon swirl bread, peanut butter pie, shortbread (I swear this list isn't entirely sweets...), cauliflower soup, and a tomato tart. The tomato tart holds the last bit of this year's tomato crop, and I am feeling a little bit down about that. I was also less than thrilled to see how ridiculously puny my leeks were for my cauli soup.  They were probably a centimeter in circumference. Oh well. It was my first year growing leeks (ha, yes, an excuse!).

Well, I am off to start the mordanting process.