Peach ice cream and Edna's new friend

Hello, everybody!!

  Well, I'm glad this post isn't back-to-back with Jan's hot fudge sundae (which I'm absolutely going to try) because we'd all die of a sugar high. But since the Tex had a healthy quinoa (I love to say it- don't you?) We can go on our merry way to.... homemade ice cream!

Edna was yearning for some goodies. I caught her reading this old book. It's so old, it says 'COOKY' on the front. Heehee! We love Betty Crocker. She has very lovely hairstyles. And aprons. Ok, and the recipes are good, too.

I swapped out Eda's 'cooky' book for a few other dessert books. She was having a good old time. but what she chose wasn't from these, but rather an old recipe we have for ice cream... because we have peaches!!

The thing about having your own peach trees: they all start to ripen at once. So, two trees equals lots of peaches! We're handing them over the fences on each side, throwing twenty pounds at a time at our neighbors but still... we're barely keeping up with the peaches.

I made a few batches of mint peach compote and it was tasty. But this was the winner: vanilla bean peaches. YUMMY. (See my vintage Kerr jar? Whee!) It was out of a batch of jars my dad brought over.

Here it is before it was stuffed with peaches. Oooooo!

There were a few of these ATLAS giant jars. I mean, what am I supposed to put in these?? The glass is wavy and ancient, even has little bubbles trapped in it. Lovely!

There were lots of those blue Ball jars so I sent them to facebook friends across the US last week. They got jars and I got the peace of mind that my kids would not be destroying those babies. So pretty! I sent Julie a Presto jar... but it came back to me. Can you believe I sent a package to her that didn't even have her street address? Ugh. My brain.

 Ok, so Edna wanted to make some ice cream, the old fashioned way.
NOTE: I doubled this recipe so the pictures will look like a lot more than the recipe should be. :) The amounts I give are for a single batch.
3/4 cup sugar

2 tablespoons cornstarch

1/8 teaspoon table salt

2 cups milk                               

1 cup heavy whipping cream

1 egg yolk                               

Click to see savings

1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla     

 So, let's start on the base. Mix sugar, corn starch and salt in a pan and whisk together. Pour in the milk and cream, whisking constantly. Heat until thickened, stirring constantly over medium heat. After it's thickened, set aside to cool for about ten minutes.

Separate one egg. Beat the yolk.

 Pour one cup of the cooled milk mixture into the eggs, stirring constantly. Add the egg/milk mix back to the pan and heat again until a pudding-like consistency.

 Oh, our grapes are ready! Seedless sweet grapes... Except for the multitude of spiders, we're in heaven over here!

So that's the recipe for plain vanilla. Most of the kids just wanted vanilla, so that was fine. but we had all these peaches! And I found this awesome recipe for peach and pecan ice cream!                      

1 cup peeled and coarsely chopped peaches                                                              

1 1/2 tablespoons butter                               

1 cup coarsely chopped pecans

1/4 teaspoon kosher salt

 Here is some of the vanilla bean peaches, mashed. Mmmmmmmm.

 Add the butter, salt, and pecans to a pan and toast on medium for about 8-9 minutes.

 I split the vanilla ice cream into two bowls, so I could add what I wanted to the parents' batch.

 Stir in mashed peaches, about 1 cup. (This looks like more, and it was. And it was delicious. but the recipe says one cup.)

 Add toasted pecans. Later, I thought these tasted more like walnuts. Oh well. They were still good.

 Put the vanilla into the deep freeze to solidify. (Oh, see? Pecans in the background! I knew there were some... Hey, and rhubarb, too!)

 While it was chilling, I noticed Edna had struck up a conversation with this strange, leather box. He seemed sort of old and musty. I wasn't really excited about looking inside. But she was whirring and making little happy noises, so...

 There were all sorts of little leather packages inside. My favorite had its own retractable tape measure... and lenses!

 Once I figured out how to open it, the flat metal camera opened to this! How handsome is this guy?? He and Edna had a great time talking about the height of investigative journalism in the fifties and sixties. Walter (or Wally, as the kids called him) smelled faintly of cigars and vermouth.

 He'd spent a lot of his time taking Polaroid snaps of celebrities at boring cocktail parties, but his heart was in the newspapers. Sadly, he'd been in that box quite a while because they didn't even make film for Walter anymore.

Plus, he'd never seen the internet. Of course, right after the VMA's, he decided it wasn't worth trying to follow celebrities anymore. He's going to be very happy as a showpiece. Retirement might not be that bad, after all.

 Peach ice cream... melllllllting!! It was delicious!

This was definitely the hands down winner. Crunchy sweet/salty pecans with tart/sweet peaches were the perfect combination. You can tell how hot it is in my kitchen because it was slushy within minutes of hitting the bowl. But it was still GOOD.

 

 

 Ok, everybody! Have a wonderful week. We're headed off on vacation in a few days and I just found out that our place at the lake has no electricity. (Um, WHAT???) Now, how am I supposed to write without a plug in for the laptop?! Maybe it will be a real vacation after all!
Or maybe I'll go nutty.
Until next Wednesday!

P.S. I also have Tina Russo Radcliffe over on my blog today, talking about her new book The Rosetti Curse! Pop on by and chat! She's giving away free e-books to any that are interested in giving it a try and leaving a review.