Showing posts with label ice cream. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ice cream. Show all posts

Sunday, May 20, 2012

It's beginning to feel a lot like summer


This weekend marks the unofficial kick-off of summer, and here in Toronto we couldn’t have asked for better weather. Let me put it this way; I was in Vegas last weekend and it feels just as hot today.
The first cottage guests have already come and gone, the barbecue worked its magic on a dozen summertime skewers, and the Pinot Grigio was flowing freely. 
With people dropping by each weekend, I’m usually on kitchen duty, yet I don’t mind at all because:
1)    I enjoy the prep and cooking that goes into making meals for large groups. Plus, I got the moves like Jagger. (Maybe not. But I’m fast, and that’s what counts here.)
2)    I especially love the challenge of drop-in guests and middling fridge ingredients. (Top Chef Cottage: Quick Fire Challenge. Make a vegan feast for 10 in 15 minutes!)
3)    Most importantly, if I do the cooking, I don’t do the cleaning. (Cottage rules.)
What’s more, summertime cooking is easy cooking. Compared to Christmas’s competitive feasts, during the summer nobody wants intricate hors d’oeuvres, a big turkey and sides, layered cakes and cookies, mulled cider and gobs of chocolate. Instead, it’s all about sparking up the barbecue (or smoker), and throwing on some burgers and steaks, whipping up big bowls of fresh salads, or even a simple platter of juicy tomatoes with basil and olive oil.
During summer we let the fresh foods speak for themselves, asparagus, corn and beans becoming the snap, crackle and pop of the vegetable world. Meats sizzle, tofu does its own thing, and ice cream is ever-present. If you think about it, it’s actually the longest and busiest entertaining stretch of the year. 
In other words, it’s the perfect time to reciprocate a long put-off dinner invite. 

Friday, October 8, 2010

This just in: Everybody loves ice cream

I think that one of the best things you can do for a person, besides maybe giving him one of your kidneys, is buying him an ice cream cone. And if it’s premium ice cream served in a fresh waffle cone, so much the better.

I guess what I’m saying is, I may just be the best person in the world for treating my brother and his lovely family to ice cream at the Marble Slab Creamery a couple of weekends ago.

Marble Slab Creamery introduced the primitive yet effective “frozen slab” ice cream technique/experience to Canadians when the first shop opened in Calgary in 2003. There are now 73 locations across the country.

And yet, none of us had ever tried it. Well, this was the day!

We joined the queue, fretted over ice cream choices, waffle cone options, then stressed over the “mix-ins” -- there were 35 choices that could be folded into our super premium (read: at least 14% butterfat) ice cream on the frigid marble slab, by the fast-moving staff.

With fresh cones in hand, we marched over to Yonge-Dundas Square as we all noted the creamy texture and the freshness of the ice cream. I had ordered a scoop of chocolate with Reese peanut butter cups (no-brainer), Madeline had a scoop of vanilla with walnuts and Oreos (yawn), Emily had eggnog ice cream with a whole bunch of crap stirred in there (weird but good), Judi had chocolate in a dipped cone (daring for Judi), and Marty’s choice was raspberries and peanuts in strawberry ice cream in a chocolate dipped waffle cup (he only had himself to blame.)

But the ice cream was great, we all gobbled it up, and I think their smiles say it all: Everyone loves ice cream. (Though from the look on Marty's face, I think he's having mixed emotions.)