Gothic Granola

Ice cream cake is simple: cookie crumbles, ice cream, and syrup and/or preserves. Remember when cookie used to be spelled "cooky?"  I wasn't alive then, but I read my mom's copy of Ginny's Baby-sitting Business (Catherine Woolley, 1969) in 2001, and there it was, "cooky" instead of cookie.

Rather than quote a lot of Shakespeare, or speak in meta-voice about how much I struggled to write this post (I didn't...I just began writing), I begin at the beginning. What is in a name? As I served this dessert that met the  Health Starts Here  standards for Wednesday's Foodie Call, I refined my description. "Sweet hommos" was a turn-off to a lot of people. Come on, foodies, you'd try garlic ice cream, right? Roasted garlic ice cream would actually be pretty tasty, methinks. "Cookie Dough" confused many people into thinking it was actually raw dough. Nope, it's the flavour. Kind of like "Birthday Cake" ice cream from Coldstone Creamery. It ain't cake; it tastes reminiscent of the real deal. I could go on, and I don't intend to insult the patrons' intelligence. I'll pacify myself with the platitude, "genius is usually misunderstood," wink wink. Anyway, I didn't scale up the dates enough when I used an ent...

For the last two years, I've ended Christmas with a pile and a half of cookies in January of which I'm bored by Marilyn Manson's birthday (5 January).   There are, of course, worse problems to have. I read this op-ed today in the New York Times where a Catholic priest gives his view of the world. "One true thing is this: Faith is lived in family and community, and God is experienced in family and community," Father Kevin O'Neil writes. We live in this earthly plane.  We regularly experience reality as earthly beings.  "I really do believe God enters the world through us," Father O'Neil said, and "[w]e need one another to be God's presence." How do we show love to one another?  How do we show kindness to ourselves, our loved ones, our friends, our enemies, and our environment? There is no one right answer to this question.  It's up to you to ask yourself and listen hard to the still voice in your heart.  That voi...

Two pies. Last week I made a pumpkin mousse pie using the Whole Foods pumpkin mousse recipe , substituting pecans and pumpkin for the cashews and squash (and using less coconut milk), in a raisin-oat piecrust .  ‘Twas mucho good.   Two words: black cocoa.