Country roads....

Keep on truckin

I went to lunch today with the intention of reading a magazine in a Japanese restaurant and eating noodles. Instead I ended up in an op shop (Oh no! How surprising!) and purchased an awesome pair of shoes for the boy, a stash of vintage linens (pillow cases, doilies and placemats) and some trucker country. Oh Yeah! And then hand eggs benedict and coffee for lunch. (I love places that do an all day breakfast).

Some of the linen has age spots and so may find itself as something else but I'm super happy with my Lee Conway purchase. You can't go wrong with anything that is advertising classic Darryl and Ozzy Ostrich on the back cover. Now, let's see how many versions of Me and Booby McGee,  I can collect on vinyl.

xx CC

Lemon cheesecake ice cream

I make no apologies as to my blogging (in)frequency.

What drives me to actually blog something on this hot spring day (35 bloody degrees in spring and some people still deny global freakin warming....aaahhh!) ? Food porn of course. 

I could have blogged the awesome veggo san choy bao I made. Lovely crispy iceberg, soft tofu and just the right amount of salty soy...but hey, I really am just not organised some days. We spent the morning at the beach (oh, an upside to global warming!) and the kidlets were too frazzled and needing food too quickly for me to photograph it!

Gratuitous family fun beach shot!

So what you get instead is LEMON CHEESECAKE ICE CREAM!!!!! Yep. I'm shouting. It was that good it deserves shouting. And squealing (but I haven't figured out how to type girly squeals.)

So without further ado, 

Lemon Cheesecake Ice cream

3/4 cup water

3/4 cup sugar

1 cup Ricotta

1 cup Thickened Cream

1/2 cup lemon juice

1 lemon rind zested. 

Handful of toasted nuts (optional)

Make a quick sugar syrup by combining sugar and water in a saucepan and boiling until sugar disolves. Remove from heat immediately. 

Add lemon juice (I used 3 lemons, you probably won't need this many, but since the kids hid my juicer...and hairbrush... and the remote I squeezed the lemons by hand) and zest and pour into another bowl to cool. 

In a separate bowl mix the ricotta and cream (you don't need to spend too much time doing this as the ice cream maker will do the bulk of the job for you). 

Add lemon mixture to cream / ricotta. Stir until combined and add to ice cream maker. You will need to do this step rather quickly as the lemon juice will begin to separate the cream, don't worry, it all comes out great in the end. Turn your icecream maker on and follow manufacturers directions (mine takes about 20 minutes). 

If you are using toasted nuts, go ahead and toast them now. I used pecans as they were what I had in the cupboard, but I suspect macadamias or almonds would taste better. A biscuit or shortbread crumble would also probably be unreal.

If it is 35 degrees I suggest pouring yourself a drink while you wait for your machine to magic up the icecream (white wine spritzers were my choice tonight, alcohol and and water with ice...how can you go wrong?)

Lemon Cheesecake Icecream

Serve in little bowls. This served 4 of us (including two little people servings), but was very rich and could have served six with less piggy appetites. 

Til next time. 

CC

No sew bunting

Long time no chitty chat hey? We moved a few weeks back, 45 minutes down the road but a million miles from where we were. We've spent the last few years feeling a bit isolated, so we have moved home. Some things don't change (kids are still great but tiring), but we are happier living near the ocean and friends.

Now that we are almost unpacked (not unpacking completely since we are renting a friend of a friends place while we look for one to buy) I have been making an effort to get to some projects that have been sitting around for a while.

Today's no sew bunting is a great one for those that are a little challenged in the craft department (like me!).

I picked up a stash of napkins a while back for about 20 cents each. I don't think anyone has used apricot for decorating since about 1988, but mix it up with some patterned 70's orange (sounds hideous doesn't it?) and voila! 5 minutes a couple of dollars and bunting!

I've ties the napkins together rather than sew, basically because I'm lazy, but you can use any excuse you like.

OK..off to enjoy some more of the springshine!

xxCC