Let’s talk ice cream festivals, recipe experiments, cherry massacres, #PopsicleWeek, and a list of links from around the web in this week’s twenty-first edition of Thymeline.
[Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links, and I will earn a commission if you purchase through these links. I recommend products because I find them helpful or interesting and all thoughts and opinions are my own.]
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Do you love ice cream? I know I do.
This weekend, we met our friends and their little one for a day out, and ate our way across the New Castle County Ice Cream Festival here in Delaware. Despite waking up to an early morning rainstorm, the weather was just perfect. Beautiful Rockwood Park was covered in over 50 trucks and tents of food vendors and local businesses. What a lovely way to start the summer.
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In my own kitchen, I’ve been on an experimental kick lately. The influx of new produce in the markets and my own regained mobility has put my creativity on overdrive. On one hand, it’s great – I’m trying a lot of new stuff and getting a lot of ideas. On the other hand, it also means the long-term testing and writing schedules I’ve laid out for myself are being adjusted daily to accommodate. Not necessarily a bad thing, but can be potentially disorienting at times.
A few things I’ve made this week:
Because I need a simple pasta for every season, corn and zucchini one-skillet summer pasta:
The peaches were too good to pass up at the local farm, so I pulled together and preserved a jalapeno peach whiskey glaze inspired by a recipe in Vivian Howard’s Deep Run Roots (see my full review of the cookbook here). I tried out a jar on some perfectly tender (and totally on sale) bone-in pork chops and it was delicious!
I also made a beautiful batch of Bourbon Soaked Cherries, adapted from a recipe by Kristy Gardner of She Eats. I’ve tweaked it along the way for my purposes (it’s what I do), but the original is pretty excellent on its own. I pitted all two pounds of cherries while watching some mediocre detective mystery on Netflix, and posted my resulting “crime scene” on Instagram:
To my surprise, I found out some people aren’t aware of a labor-saving summer kitchen tool – a cherry pitter! I usually resist getting one-use tools for space reasons, but having one of these on hand encourages me to make so many more cherry things. It’s still messy business (as you can see), but so much faster and prettier than doing it all by hand.
Other than that, I’m super excited for #PopsicleWeek starting up! I’ll even have a pop recipe of my own up on the blog this week. Check out all the recipes in this handy list managed and maintained by the excellent online event host, Billy Green over at Wit and Vinegar.
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Now, links!
- Food52 is making more of my sugar-filled dreams come true with this Mint Chocolate “Ice Cream” Cake and Chocolaty Ice Cream Pavlova!
- S’mores granola bars sound like a perfect camping treat. And they’re vegan, too.
- These Cacio e Pepe Mini Muffins take me back to my semester abroad in Rome in all the best ways.
- Excellent vacation planning advice! Now let’s see if I end up remembering to follow it before our week-long trip to Utah…
- Helpful tips for any home bar.
- I may have moved away from Jersey City earlier this year, but that doesn’t make me any less excited about the new distillery opening up there! I love a good excuse to make a visit back for some Corgi Spirits.
- I’m so blown away by this gorgeous forest-inspired bridal shower is over on Molly Yeh’s blog. Utterly precious.
- A huge move for Food & Wine Magazine!
- This avocado plush is just too much to handle.
Cheers!
