Ice cream in February? Indeed!

In the past month or so we’ve made 3 different frozen concoctions…orange sherbet, mint chocolate chip ice cream, and meyer lemon sorbet. They were all mighty tasty but I have to say that the orange sherbet was my favorite. We used some big juicy organic navel oranges from the farmers market and I used this recipe. It tasted like a creamsicle and it was the perfect summery escape during the cold days we’ve had in January and February. The ice cream attachment for my kitchen aid mixer has worked pretty well so far and the best thing about having an ice cream maker is that you can create fun and crazy flavors, and control what goes in (fat content, amount of sugar, organic ingredients, etc). I can’t wait to experiment some more, but I might wait until Spring comes. What ideas for ice cream/sorbet/froyo flavors do you have?

I heart homemade pizza

For Valentine's Day MO and I made pizza... heart-shaped pizza! MO made the dough (per Fat Boy's scribbled notes) and I prepped the toppings. We made cheese pizza with mushrooms (MO's favorite) and white pizza with red onions and rosemary (my favorite), pictured here. And since it was Valentine's Day, we shared. :)

Adventures in Argentina

When we told people about our recent travel plans, I was asked, “Why Argentina??? You don’t eat meat and you don’t speak Spanish!” I’m here to tell you that there is much much more to Argentine cuisine than beef (and not speaking Spanish only added to the adventure)!

Our Argentine adventures included exploring, site-seeing, museum-going, hiking, glacier trekking, sunbathing, and – of course – lots and lots of eating and drinking.

this vegetarian's favorite foods of Argentina:

Empanadas. These delicious stuffed pastries are everywhere. Although ground beef may be the most traditional filling, we found many delicious vegetarian varieties including cebolla y queso (onion and cheese), verdura (usually a spinach mixture), choclo (corn), and caprese. Our favorites were the cebolla y queso empanadas at a little bakery in El Chalten in Patagonia.

Ice Cream. Argentines love their ice cream, especially in BA. There is literally a helados store on every corner. In addition to the 10 different takes on the dulce de leche flavor, fruit flavors are common as well. Our favorite combo – lemon mousse and strawberry - was discovered by mistake when MO’s pronunciation of vainilla (vanilla) was mistaken for frutilla (strawberry).

Wine. Ok, wine is not a food, but it is plentiful, good and very inexpensive in Argentina. Even in restaurants it is typical to find many good wines priced under $12 us per bottle. Needless to say we tried a lot of wine. I enjoyed lots of delicious Malbecs and Cabernet Sauvignons, but I also discovered a new varietal that is perfect for the hot summer days we had there: torrontes. Torrontes is a fruity floral white wine, crisp but not overly acidic.

Oh yeah, MO said the beef was excellent, too. :)