News from the Swamp

Don't you just want to slurp that?

We're melting here. The words melt out of my brain before I have a chance to type them onto my melting keyboard. There's only one defense, one last bulwark before insanity sets in. Ice cream sandwiches. On Monday, when I was feeling a bit more mobile, I bought some tiny sugar plums from the Union Square Greenmarket. A few days later, having made short work of my caramel ice cream welcome home present for Matt, I adapted another David Lebovitz recipe to suit my sweet sweet plums. The recipe was for plum ice cream, but since I used whole milk instead of cream, I think it teeters on the edge of being plum sherbet. Either way, it is sharp and fantastically pink, with the help of a little splash of ginjinja. Because the plums were so sweet, I reduced the sugar called for by about one third.

 

The oatmeal cookies are also a David Lebovitz recipe, made without the raisins he recommends to better showcase the plums. I had qualms about turning on the oven but the recipe was so quick and the pairing so perfect that I didn't regret it. So pink!

Next up, vanilla/mixed pepper ice cream, with my brand new huge squashy Ugandan vanilla beans. Now, diving back into the cool lake bottom.

Wild Hive Flour

On the recommendation of Local Fork, I emailed Wild Hive Farm to get some local flour. I arranged to pick it up on Saturday morning at Quattro's Game Farms stand at the Union Square Greenmarket. I then promptly forgot, and remembered only around 9 am on Saturday, so made an emergency trip out before my meeting, hoping those croissants wouldn't overproof. I made it, they made it, I went to the farmers' market 4 times that day, and I am excited to bake with my milled-to-order bread flour, corn flour, and pastry flour.

My previous experiments in artisan and local flour included been 'Colonial-style' wheat and buckwheat from Anson Mills, which was incredibly sweet-smelling, whole wheat from Wood Prairie Farm in Maine, and whole wheat and buckwheat (and kasha) from the Blew Family's Oak Grove Plantation in New Jersey.