I went with the agave nectar in the Lemon cordial and the turbinado sugar in the lime mainly because the agave wasn’t going to compete too much with the lemon, the lime I’m nervous about, I don’t know how the molasses characteristics are going to affect the over all cordial.

The agave made the simple sugar a little less dense and seems to have incorporated well.  The lemon cordial is clear and inviting.  It’s been put up, so we’ll just have to wait about a month now to see how it turns out.

The turbinado sugar is a raw cane sugar, which still has some of the molasses surrounding the crystals.  Unlike the substitution amount for the agave (.5 ~.66 : 1), the turbinado is a one for one substitution with refined sugar.  It made the simple syrup for the cordial quite dark, which was interesting and will make the cordial a lot darker than the last of them I’ve made.  The molasses in the mix should make for an interesting complexity in the cordial.  Again though, we don’t get to find out how it tastes for a month.

The liquor store also didn’t have the Mohawk Vodka that I usually use, but hey did have some Popov, which since it is distilled in Connecticut, should have the same non-flavor & non-smell characteristics as the rest of the American vodkas.  This is really important for cordial making.  You don’t want to have the flavors and smells of the vodka competing with the rest of the cordial.  Makes it a mucky mess.

The lemon ice cream is a little different than what I usually make.  It wasn’t heated prior to putting it in the ice cream maker.

I used this recipe from www.bellaonline.com:

• 3 cups milk – whole milk or 2%
• 1 cup evaporated milk
• 1 cup whipping cream
• 1/2 cup lemon juice
• 3/4 tsp. lemon extract
• 2 cups sugar

Preparation -
Mix all the ingredients together until well blended. Pour the mixture into the ice cream maker and freeze according to manufacturer’s directions. The ice cream will be soft and creamy. For firmer ice cream, spoon it into a freezer container, cover, and place it in the freezer for about 3 hours. For easy scooping, remove the ice cream from the freezer about 10 minutes before serving.
I’m excited to see how it turns out.  I took some out a little bit ago and it does seem to be setting up right.

Some of the contents of my hot and sour soup

There are more so many, many more piece of those red pepper in there!

I forgot my lunch today and so I went to the Rice Kitchen, which is one of my more favored Chinese restaurants. I got my normal Lunch special, but I thought I would try something new. So I got the Hot and Sour Soup… ummm wow. I think my lips may burst into flame. I took the pictures with my iPhone and it doesn’t do well with close-ups, but it tries.  Other than the sheer terror that envelops me on seeing this many peppers and the sweat involved with eating it.  Overall it isn’t too bad.  I don’t know that I would get it again, but I don’t know it seems like it would be really really good on a chilly day.

Seriously though… I’ve got nothing on this one, so it’ll be an adventure.

I’m definitely going to have to invest in some flavored fuzzy water to go with these.  I think I’m going to have to make a Chocolate Cordial as well and an Orange.  I’m getting all drooley just thinking aout these.

Speaking of smoothing out.  The banana I made back in February is really coming into it’s own.  I had some last weekend and it’s really mellowed.  I still need to get some Creme de Cocoa so that I can make it more of a chocolate banana though. Can you say, “Yum”!

Anyway, this batch I made:

• Cherry
• Lemon
• Lime
• Amaretto

I made a double batch of Lime this time, we really liked it a LOT.  It was really refreshing and went well with so many other beverages!

The amaretto is going to take about 4 – 6 more months to finish and is one of my more abitious project, but I’m hopeful it’ll turn out.  It’s just a long time to wait… then I’ll have to tweak it to get it as close to DiSarano as posible, which is my ultimate goal. Well it’s good to have goals!

Have a great weekend, Tally ho!

The Creole Skillet

I’ve only gotten two items off the menu so far.  A Blackstone and the Creole Skillet.  The first time we went I got the Creole Skillet, which comes in 3 varieties; ham, bacon or veggies. As you may have guessed I got the veggie version.  It was to die for.  Not only was the flavor combination, fantastic it was beautiful! Bryan got the Grilled Breakfast Panini, bacon of course, and devoured it.

The next week Bryan got the Bacon version of the Creole Skillet which he said was phenomenal as well, but then again he’s addicted to bacon.   He wants a bacon man with and bacon house.  I settled on the Blackstone. I didn’t enjoy it as much as the Creole Skillet, but that may be because I really wanted the skillet, but decided to be adventurous and try something else from the menu.

The Blackstone

This last weekend we went back and I had the Creole Skillet again, unfortunately I don’t remember what Bryan had… I was too busy devouring the skillet. They were also trying to decide on whether or not to bring in a new cheesecake and asked us to try a sample. Now I haven’t had cheesecake since the great cheesecake melting disaster of 1994, but I put on a brave face and ate it. It was really quite good. It was a chocolate cheesecake with pecans, caramel and some kind of a crumble. If the rest are that good I may… may I say… lift my personal cheesecake ban. We’ll just have to wait and see. Overall, I would highly recommend Portable Feast & Friends to food eaters everywhere!