Don’t embarrass me kids.
Did somebody just fart?
Hey DeliciousTings blog fans! I’m talking to you, Mom, sis, and that anonymous bot sending me spam comments (nope, I don’t need Jimmy Choo shoes or Cialis – or maybe..?) Anyway, have I got a treat for you today. Let’s start off by playing a little game. Here’s a list of items: a dining room table, several chairs, 80s style round stools, a tiny step stool with legs that look like crayons, a compact stereo receiver, a child’s scooter, 2 kids bikes, 2 adult mountain bikes, an Italian coffee maker, the seminal 70s era book “Free to Be You and Me”, a ping pong table. What do all of these things have in common? Well, along with a bunch of other items that I can’t recall, these are all things that I’ve found on the street and brought home! Oh my God, I just realized I’m hoarder. Oh well. Know thyself, am I right? But why exactly do these things give me so much unmitigated joy? 1) They’re free. 2) They’re still totally useful and they work! Anybody who knows me will tell you that yeah, I’m into value (some might even say “cheap” – I say “frugal”) AND I hate wasting things. If something can still be used, then I’m damn well going to use it and if they’re not quite useful, then I will MacGyver them until they are useful (I mean, within reason). So yeah, other peoples’ trash can very well be my treasure. I think I honed my scavenging ways when I was living in Brooklyn and needed to furnish my apartment – the first time I had my own place. People in Prospect Heights, where I was living at the time, would throw out really good stuff. Here’s an example. I was walking home at night on a block with a bunch of brownstones and happened upon this beautiful wooden dining room table, legs detached from the table top that somebody had put out. Score! The only thing was this table was heavy and there was no way I could haul it the three blocks back to my place. So, I hailed a taxi (this was before Uber and Lyft), loaded the table into the trunk and then used the remaining strength I had to haul that table up four flights of stairs to my apartment.
That unadulterated joy of finding cool and useful stuff on the street has stayed with me and now that we live back in the Bay, it’s something I’ve probably passed on to my kids as well. In fact, just the other week, as we were driving back from grocery shopping, Kaya spotted a kid’s mountain bike out on the curb, that somebody was giving away. It was perfectly fine except for a couple of flat tires. We brought it home, pumped up the tires and boom! Kaya’s got a bike with two hand brakes and gears. After her first sesh with the bike, I asked her, “Kaya, what do you think of your new bike?” “I LOVE it!” she gushed. True story.
So where am I going with all of this? What could this possibly have to do with a frozen nondairy dessert that is spelled with silent “t” (thank you, French language)? Well, one of my most recent street finds – one that gives me almost as much joy as the bike gives Kaya – is a Donvier Ice Cream Maker. Now anyone who grew up in the 80s knows that the Donvier Ice Cream maker was the shit when it came to small batch homemade ice cream. Okay, maybe it wasn’t all that. But when you’re a young kid and you see it in a fancy kitchen store and think of all the possibilities of homemade ice cream and spend $30 of your own hard saved up money to buy your dad a father’s day gift in the hopes that he’ll be into making ice cream every day of the week, then believe me it’s the shit. We ended up using it maybe three times. Something about the recipes for ice cream included with the maker seemed a bit too complicated. Then we put it on a shelf and promptly forgot about it. According to my dad, he gave it away several years ago during a move. And that was the end of ice cream making in our house and the end of our relationship… Just kidding! I love my dad. We get along great. But back to the story. So, imagine my delight, when I spied a genuine Donvier ice cream maker in it’s original box. Sure the box was a little worse for wear, but the maker itself – the plastic container, the plastic attachments and most importantly the cold storage barrel- were in impeccable condition. You see where I’m going with this right? Call me a nostalgic sap, but as I’ve gotten older (it’s fair to say approaching middle age (WTF!), I’ve definitely been reminiscing about my childhood and that’s become even more the case now that I myself have kids. So here I am, walking along the streets of Oakland when I’m gifted this literal blast from the past. An ice cream maker that I loved as a kid, that represented something I could share with my own father has now reentered my life so that I can share the experience of making a homemade frozen treat with my kids. I told you. Sappy.
I’m happy to say, we’ve already used the maker three times and instead of getting bogged down with complicated ice cream recipes, I’ve just decided to wing it, which is kind of how I approach cooking in general (and life, truth be told). Since it’s still summer, though nearing fall, we’ve been using strawberries because they’re in season and also because we can get really cheap delicious strawberries in the bargain section at Berkeley Bowl (remember, I’m cheap). These almost work better than the normal strawberries because they are so ripe and full of strawberry flavor. Who cares if they’re all bruised? I just cut out the bad parts and since I’m going to mash and freeze them anyway, it doesn’t even matter. So we’ve made strawberry ice cream twice (the second time I pretty much nailed it -it’s all about the half and half)). The one other time we’ve used the Donvier, we made strawberry, lemon, mint sorbet. Fortunately for you guys, I captured that occasion on video. This is what I’m talking about: confluence. You see it’s that time of year again where Kaya and I had a week to just kind of hang out before she started school (2nd grade!) and we had the time to make another cooking vid together. For this cooking session, unlike the previous two years where we opted for savory dishes (fried chicken and then chow mein) we decided to make something sweet and frozen (remember the Donvier). To up the sweetness of the video, we added another key ingredient: Mona (aka Second Daughter). You might remember her first appearance from C and K Make Granola. She’s the wild-haired 1 1/2 year old asking for crackers. Well she’s almost 4 1/2 now and it’s fair to say, she’s ready for prime time, or a night at the Improv. Don’t believe me? Watch the video.
Okay, but first things first. Here are the ingredients for our Strawberry Lemon Mint Sorbet
2 lbs strawberries
Juice of 1 lemon
1-2 tbsp of fresh mint (or to taste)
3-5 tbsp sugar (or to taste)
And this is how we do it.
