Smells like Christmas

A week or two ago I ordered a Yankee Candle samplers set called Christmas Memories. They showed up today and smell fabulous.

They're damn near impossible to find so I ended up getting this set off of Ebay from England, but worth every Euro. December is going to smell pretty fantastic at the Hartman house!

Last day of food debauchery

Today is the last day of my 3 week gluten (and other allergen) challenge - woo hoo!! To celebrate, I had my first and last doughnut of the entire experience.

An apple fritter, which did emotionally fulfill me, along with a fresh mug of coconut mocha coffee (flavored k-cups from Kohls). After today I can go back to my little meat and veggie world where I will hopefully quickly shake this never ending stomach ache and face rash I've had for the last three weeks. Amen.

Tis the season

The Thanksgiving leftovers weren't even cold and I was already putting up the Christmas tree. I had presents waiting and no where to put them until now...

I shouldn't get too attached to all their prettiness though, most are getting shipped north soon. Even the post office is already selling their holiday finest.

And what better way to commemorate a day of gift wrapping and grocery shopping (and by the way, there's nobody at the grocery store the day or two after Thanksgiving) than a fresh batch of vanilla ice cream.

It's a simple as whipping cream, whole milk (or half & half), sugar and vanilla. I haven't run it through the machine yet, but the mix already tastes mighty fine.

Instant Thanksgiving

Since nobody was coming here and we didn't need to be anywhere, we went cheap and easy for our Thanksgiving meal.

I bought a rotisserie chicken yesterday and picked off all the meat for us to reheat today, baked some premade rolls, microwaved some frozen mashed sweet potatoes (delicious), made a green bean casserole, and heated up a container of gravy from TJ's. 35 minutes from start to finish. I didn't buy anything special for dessert, but do have a  chocolate ice cream mix chilling in the fridge for later.

We have spent our day being thankful for football while watching our second of three games playing today stopping only long enough for an occasional walk around the block. Living the dream, living the dream.

Can I have some more, please

We've been burning our ice cream maker up with more and more flavors since our first batch of ice cream. First it was pumpkin pie, then espresso, followed by creamsicle (50/50 bars), and then today I whipped up a batch of peanut butter cup ice cream.

It was an ice cream made with a mix of peanut butter and sunflower butter with chopped up mini peanut butter cups in it. Definitely my favorite so far and I have plenty of  leftover ingredients to make more. Next up? Maybe a plain vanilla or chocolate. My sister, Wilson, had better start making her ice cream wish list for when she's here at Christmas because we'll have two full weeks to make all our frozen dairy dreams come true!

Crazy for helado!

That's ice cream to you gringos (helado is one of the few Spanish words the Canadian knows along with the word for candy). Last night we made our first batch of frozen yogurt in my new Christmas toy. The process was really simple; mix the ingredients together, turn on the ice cream machine (after chilling the mixing bowl in the freezer for 24 hours), pour the ingredients in through the open top of the machine and let churn for 20 minutes.

After 20 minutes you can eat it in a soft serve consistency or put it in a freezer safe container and let it harden to more of an ice cream texture. Last night we made pumpkin pie frozen yogurt and I was not impressed with it. It was too tart and too pumpkiny. Thankfully it was a small batch (about 3 servings) so it wasn't a total waste. Undeterred, I threw the mixing bowl back in the freezer with the plan to make another batch this afternoon of coffee ice cream. After mixing together coconut milk, whipping cream, sugar, espresso, and vanilla we had tremendously delicious bowls of coffee soft serve.

The machine came with a small recipe book with lots of other delicious sounding recipes to try like peppermint and chocolate peanut butter because nothing screams winter time like a chilly bowl of fresh ice cream!

Christmas came early

Yesterday I had a delivery of Christmas gifts, one of which was for me that apparently Santa didn't want to wait until Christmas to give me.

That's right - a frozen yogurt and ice cream maker! We've already got the freezer bowl chilling in the freezer so that tomorrow night we can whip up a batch of  homemade deliciousness. I'm eyeballing a small batch of pumpkin pie frozen yogurt. Prepare to be jealous!