The best coconut ice cream ever

14 oz can light coconut milk
1/2 cup non fat milk
1/2 cup non fat half and half (or full fat if you dare)
finely grated lemon rind from 1 medium lemon
1 oz light rum or malibu rum
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup flaked coconut

Combine all ingredients except coconut and bring to 175 degrees on stovetop.

While mixture is heating, place 3/4 cup of coconut on a cookie sheet and place on the 2nd rack in the oven on broil. Watch carefully, stirring when coconut begins to brown. When coconut is toasted to a light to medium brown remove from oven.

When hot mixture reaches 175 degrees, remove from heat and let cool. Stir toasted coconut in to ice cream mixture.

Place ice cream mixture in refrigerator overnight, or fully chill, before placing in ice cream maker. If you don't have an ice cream maker, place the chilled mixture in freezer in a shallow pan, mixing every hour or so until it ice cream hardens.

Serve immediately or place in freezer until you are ready to eat!

I served it with fresh blueberries but I can imagine it with toasted almonds, chocolate or blackberries.

Enjoy!

Oh my Artisan Bread!

The Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day is such an incredible book! I mixed two batches, a basic dough and an olive oil dough last Friday night. From those two batches I've made three loaves of sundried tomato, fresh basil, garlic and parmesan bread, two baguettes and a batch of apple pie-raisin cinnamon rolls.

It's so easy to make interesting breads! I just tear off a grapefruit size piece of dough, roll it out and spread over the dough whatever I want in the bread. Roll the dough up jelly roll style then form in to a loaf. Let it rest for 20-40 minutes and then bake on a hot stone for about 25 minutes. I have yet to have one turn out badly.

I just mixed up two more batches tonight. Takes no more than 15 minutes to mix then a couple of hours to rise before going in the fridge.

Thanks for the great tip! This is my new favorite thing to make!

Monroe eatin'

We just got back from 10 days in Monroe. Some food highlights:

1. Trip to Calder Dairy. It was much bigger and neater than I remembered. So many cows. The strawberry milk was amazing. (Sumei, they even make their own Blue Moon & Superman ice creams!)

2. Veggies from Julie's garden.
2a. Squash casserole (Julie, what's the recipe?)
2b. Grilled vegetable burrito dinner w/ sangria.

3. Zingerman's.
3a. I love Ann Arbor.
3b. I love Zingerman's bread.
3c. I love Zingerman's magic brownies.

4. Sushi. in Monroe!

Honorable mentions:
1. Artisan bread in 5 minutes a day
2. Mexicali dip

Pasta with summer vegetables

Dinner tonight was these adorable, tiny farfalle pasta with vegetables. I sauteed onion, with a bunch of green & yellow summer squash, added red pepper flakes, garlic salt, and black pepper. At the end added some leftover corn on the cob (minus the cob). Tossed it with the cute pasta, butter, lemon juice, and nutritional yeast. Topped with grated asiago cheese. It really hit the spot. We also had sides of steamed green beans (from my garden!) and some chopped nectarines and blueberries. Aaahhh summer.

Here's a picture of what it looked like after I packed up leftovers for lunch tomorrow. (I'm never going to get pictures before we eat.)

italian sushi

In Monroe, MI, there aren't a lot of good places to eat out. And veggie friendly places are even harder to come by. But on our last night there we went out to what used to be called Dolce Vita (they'd just two days before changed their name to something else). When I'd been there before it was a rather upscale Italian restaurant...now it's not only an upscale Italian restaurant (complete with violin player) but it also serves sushi! That had me laughing for quite awhile...but now I am thinking the owners are brilliant. There are so many people out there that want to go out to sushi but their partner doesn't like it. Problem solved at the place formerly called Dolce Vita!

The sushi was actually pretty good too! I ordered:
Miso soup - not so good.
Avocado roll - good.
Veggie tempura roll - not so good. (i don't like lettuce or bell pepper in rolls)
Spicy tofu roll - good! (i can't tell you how excited and amused i was that they had tofu on the menu. the chinese restaurant we'd ordered from earlier in the week didn't even have tofu!)

Here's a few photos from the jam making extravaganza. While making 122 jars we came up with the name "Sista Jams," however 24 hours later decided it should be changed to "Sista Jams and Sauces." Some of the berries did really well without pectin, others like the blackberry and raspberry make great ice cream and waffle sauces.

With about 40 jars to myself, I have gotten creative with how to use them, and ice cream or ice milk is my latest favorite.

I made a vanilla ice milk and marbled in a spiced blueberry sauce that was incredible. I made the ice milk a little sweet for my taste, but it would be easy to tone that down.

Last night I made a coconut blackberry ice milk that I think is worth sharing.

COCONUT BLACKBERRY ICE MILK

14oz can of light coconut milk (I used Trader Joes)
1 cup skim milk
3/4 cup blackberry sauce (the original recipe called for 1 cup wild blackberries and 3/4 cup splenda)
1/4 cup sugar
3 packets of Real Lemon or 1 Tbl finely grated lemon rind
The original recipe called for a 1/2tsp rum extract, I left that out.

I ran it through the ice cream maker and in 30 minutes had a perfect thick ice milk. It's sweet but not syrupy and had a smooth coconut flavor. I'll try the recipe using blueberries next.