World's Easiest Dessert, I Promise.

Long time, no see? Thanks again for the emails--it's really nice to know that if I ever went truly missing that you'd all send out the Navy Seals to come find me. Makes me feel appreciated!

I have another post in the works for later this week but for now I thought I'd share with you the excitement I'm feeling over discovering the world's easiest dessert. I know that's so hyperbolic but truly it is the easiest--just you wait and see.

It comes from Apartment Therapy's Kitchn Blog which I faithfully follow and it's banana ice cream with only one--count it one--ingredient. Bananas. Yup, bananas and only bananas.

All you do is freeze some bananas (they were on sale this week so I grabbed a dozen or so and popped them directly into the freezer) then peel them (that's important).  Then puree them into ice cream in your food processor until they're the proper consistency--something similar to soft serve ice cream which you can then let ripen in the freezer if you want it more like the hard packed stuff.

A couple of tips:
1. I froze mine with the skins on which worked fined, it kept them from tasting like freezer, but it's hard to peel a frozen banana the way you would an unfrozen one. Just clip off the top and tail a bit, slice it crosswise in half, then slice each remaining half again lengthwise. They're pretty easy to peel that way, you'll just freeze your fingers a bit.

2. It's particularly good with homemade hot fudge sauce and a dab of whipped cream on top--it's so creamy and fresh tasting. And did I mention healthy? So healthy. Your mouths will rejoice.

 

And lest you think I've been doing nothing at all around here, this is my proof that I haven't been a complete slacker. My garden is coming up nicely in front as you can see--love those columbine and daffodils. I'm afraid I haven't been as diligent on the computer as I used to be, there have been so many other things that have seemed to occupy my attentions lately--more on those later.

I've been reading--The Night Attila Died by Michael Babcock which was completely fascinating.  Of course it went into the history of Attila but from a completely different angle. Babcock is a philologist, or one who studies the history, forms and meaning of language and while the common thought is that Attila died of a hemorrhage on his wedding night (one of many wedding nights I'd add), Babcock reconstructs the historical records linguistically to put up a case for his murder. It's Sherlock Holmes meets Henry Higgins meets CSI.  Only without any singing or dancing of course.

Then I followed that up with Round the Bend by Nevil Shute who is one of my favorite authors. If you haven't read A Town Like Alice drop everything and go read it--though honestly, I do think Requiem for a Wren (also published as The Breaking Wave) is even better. It's a novel about a British man after World War II who goes to the Persian Gulf to start up an airfreight business and his relationship with the man he's known since his teen years who is the zen-master of airplane maintenance. 

Hard to describe but Shute's characters and stories are always wonderful and this one has a bit of religion and philosophy that get you thinking. It's not what you'd call a churchy book--not at all--but it's a book about religion and what that means in relation to our lives and livelihoods and place in the world.  Five stars.

And finally, next week I'll be a guest on the local radio program "Kids These Days" with Lenore Skenazy, author of Free-Range Kids talking about helicopter parenting. At least we're taping the show next week, I'm not sure when it will air--I'll have to update this when I learn more. It ought to be fun, I'm sure I'm bound to shock a least a few with my dangerous parenting antics like letting my children play with chainsaws and all that (you know I'm kidding, right?) See you there!