LETTER FROM PARADISE (with recipes)

Family trip to Kauai, 50th Anniversary, Hawaiian recipes: Chocolate Macadamias and Shave Ice. So much catching up to do! I came back from a family trip to Hawaii with stories to tell and ideas to share. Dean and I celebrated our 50th anniversary in June and our kids treated us to a party while we were all together on Kauai. My husband put together a slide show hitting some of the high points of our life together; some that even our kids didn’t know about…

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SOPHISTICATED SORBET

Raspberry Frozen Yogurt

You may not be familiar with lingonberries (Vaccinium vitis-idaea), a relative of cranberries, unless you’ve had lunch at an IKEA store. They grow wild in cold climates and are popular for jams and sauces in Scandinavia. I planted some as a groundcover in my front yard and developed a profound respect for anyone who harvests these tiny, tart berries. No wonder we seldom see them in places where there are alternatives like big fat strawberries, raspberries, and cherries! (Even though I had them growing in my…

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ROSES FOR YOUR VALENTINE?

The perfect finale for a romantic dinner with that special someone! Recipe adapted from Nourished; a Cookbook for Health, Weight Loss, and Metabolic Balance. ROSE-FLAVORED ICE CREAM One of the most memorable desserts I ever had was a tiny scoop of rose-flavored ice cream nestled in the heart of a perfect, pale pink rose. It was presented simply, with no cookie or cake to steal the limelight. There were hundreds of guests at the event, and yet every petal was perfect and the ice cream was…

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ICE CREAM, MILK FAT, AND HOGS

A fellow low-carber who is still mourning the loss of Watch’n Carbs, the low-carb ice cream recently discontinued by Lucerne, sent me a message about his latest discovery. He was excited that he had found a sucalose-sweetened ice cream at a Ben and Jerry’s stand at the airport. With guarded optimism, I checked their website: The first flavor listed on their nutrition info chart was Butter Pecan. It had 17 grams of carbohydrate and zero fiber, so a net of 17 grams. The very last…

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EATING ROSES

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One of the most beautiful and memorable desserts I ever had was a tiny scoop of rose flavored ice cream nestled in the heart of a perfect, pale pink rose. It was presented simply, with no cookie or cake to steal the limelight. There were hundreds of guests at the event, and yet every petal was perfect and the ice cream was seemingly suspended in that fleeting, meltingly-spoonable-but-still-firm stage. To pull off such an ambitious feat was a staggering achievment for the restaurant staff. I…

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NEW SUGAR-FREE ICE CREAM!

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Well, this is refreshing news! After watching so many low-carb products disappear in the past few years, finally there is a new one. Hopefully this is the vanguard of a new low-carb trend.  After his doctor warned him to cut down on sugar or face Type 2 diabetes, Jon Gordon invented Clemmy’s ice cream in his kitchen in Palm Springs, CA and named it after his cat. Clemmy’s is said to reproduce the taste and texture of the super-premium ice creams with 25 percent fewer…

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LAISSEZ LES BON TEMPS ROULEZ; More Good Times in New Orleans and Coconut Ice Cream

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Laissez les Bon Temps Roulez, Let the Good Times Roll, is the attitude that earned New Orleans “The Big Easy” moniker. Good times defines the soul of a city that called its residents home in spite of the hardships they would face to rebuild from a disaster that none of us thought could ever happen in America. The easy choice would have been to walk away, to move on, but for some reason, those who could, came back. They came back to broken houses without…

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