Saturday Sweetness

Ice Cream in the making!, originally uploaded by mo mckinley.

This past weekend was a "no plans" weekend. Well... better put, a "no plans" Saturday as we already had made Friday and Sunday plans.

8:45 am. Eyes open. Wake up.

9:00 am. Phone call - showing at the house in half an hour.

9:01 am. Go time.

Got everything cleaned up and squared away before heading to the boy's for breakfast. Green eggs and green juice - perhaps we were celebrating Earth Day early. I'd never seen a juicer in juicing and I was impressed to say the least. Spinach, a mango, an apple, and orange went into the juicer and what came out was ohsogreen goooooooooodness. The fresh pesto mixed with the eggs made for variety in palate if not palette.

And then a rare moment of stillness struck us. Sitting at the kitchen table, forks to empty plates, we looked at each other. What next? Chess was one consideration but I wondered if 9:45 on a Saturday morning was too early for thinking that hard. So I suggested we take on a little baking challenge.

Maybe I need to qualify that. I say "challenge" because for me, any kind of baking is something nifty and new. Yea, that's right, I used the word nifty. But for Jeff the world "challenge" is not as fitting - he's got this stuff down pat - pat as in pat-in-the-pan.

We ended up making a bit of a throwback to our dessert at Oliveto in Berkeley, CA. After a little trip to Sur la Table, the Teeter, and Fresh Market - we were ready to go. First we started the ice cream.

We followed the basic vanilla ice cream directions in Alice Waters' The Art of Simple Food and then added toasted anise seeds and orange zest. While the mixture chilled thoroughly in the fridge we read up on making pastry cream and crust for our tarts (or tarts for our tarts?).