erin – Page 14 – erin morgenstern

ice cream

Yesterday when I went to the dentist to get a crown that I was supposed to get back when I had bronchitis but had to reschedule and it turned out I needed a root canal. Luckily my lovely dentist just sent me elsewhere in the same building to another lovely lady who happened to have enough time to do it right then so I got it over with immediately but still, Unexpected Root Canal does not make for the best of Tuesdays.

So last night I decided I deserved a treat and I’d been meaning to try making almond milk ice cream for awhile so I made vanilla toffee bourbon almond ice cream. With coconut. Because I could.

I started by looking up almond milk ice cream recipes to get ideas and found this great list of vegan ice cream recipes on Buzzfeed. This is not a real recipe because I was winging it and not really measuring anything, but this is what I did:

I put a lot of unsweetened almond milk in a pot and added about a 1/3 cup of coconut cream, around 1/4 cup agave nectar, a shot or so of bourbon and maybe a tablespoon of vanilla extract. I simmered that for awhile until everything was blended nicely and then I cooled it in the refrigerator for a few hours.

I mixed it some more before putting it in the ice cream machine. I also had a bar of this:

I put about half the bar of it in a ziplock bag and hit it with a hammer until it was basically chocolate almond toffee dust and added that to the ice cream. I left a bit aside to crumble on top. (This does, I realize, make this recipe non-vegan but if there’s such a thing as vegan toffee that would work, or any candy crumbly something. I’m not vegan, I’m an omnivore with an aversion to gluten who likes to save the dairy in her diet for cheese.)

It is probably the best thing to ever come out of the ice cream maker (though the strawberry prosecco sorbet runs a close second) and still felt light and almost sorbet-ish but the coconut and the toffee gave it a nice richness and I’m sure the bourbon didn’t hurt.

Might try it again with peanut butter cups instead of toffee.

By erin, 11 years ago

flax-golden

flax-golden tales: mind the bell

mind the bell

They used to say “Mind the Bell” mostly as a… what’s the opposite of a greeting? They’d say it when bidding farewell to someone, sometimes turning it into a single word: mindthebell, or minddebel. Nobody does it as much anymore, but teachers still say it at the end of class, because their teachers said it and their teachers before them.

I asked once what it meant and was told it was a shortened version of “Be Mindful of the Bell” but when I asked why we needed to be mindful of the bell no one could give me an answer.

They’d point at the old bell tower with its perpetually silent bell and shrug.

My grandmother told me once that if it rings I should run as fast as I can, but my father says grandma doesn’t always make the most sense.

I know someone who tried to climb the bell tower once on a dare, but he only got about halfway up the beams before he couldn’t find anymore footholds and had to go back down.

He told me he got high enough to see the bell properly, but as far as he could tell it didn’t have a rope or anything to ring it so the whole minding thing was probably just an expression.

But this morning it started ringing and I was the only one who ran.

So I was the only one who got away.

About flax-golden tales. Photo by Carey Farrell. Text by Erin Morgenstern.

By erin, 11 yearsMay 16, 2014 ago

miscellany

blossoms & tiny thoughts

Last week I managed to get a cold again because 2014 is apparently the year of me being ill, but I’m feeling better this week. I even managed to sit under cherry blossoms in the park. I’m still finding petals in my bag from the cherry blossom rain.

The new Tori Amos album, Unrepentant Geraldines, is beautiful. It reminds me of Scarlet’s Walk. “Oysters” is my favorite track, in that right-song-at-the-right-time way.

I am writing very slowly. I am not where I wanted to be now that it’s cherry blossom season already, but I’m trying to feel alright about that. Things like taking care of myself are taking priority, and there’s a lot of stuff in my head that needs figuring out, fiction-wise.

This tiny post is brought to you by the fact that I needed to post something in between flax-golden tales and I do not have the time or the brain power for a thinky post, and I don’t have enough photos for a proper photo post.

By erin, 11 years ago