I’ve wanted an ice cream maker for awhile.  Whenever I would see them making homemade ice cream on Iron Chef I’d feel jealousy.  But I also worried it would be something I’d get and use once, and then it would sit in my kitchen collecting dust and taking up space.

However, when my mom came to visit with a Crate and Barrel gift card and said she’d get me one, I jumped at the chance. And I am having a blast trying out recipes.  So far I’ve only had one mishap with green tea ice cream, and that was because I overheated the milk.  But everything else has been great and I love making flavors that you can’t buy in stores.

So far I’ve made root beer sorbet, green tea ice cream, watermelon sorbet, blueberry lemon verbena ice cream and my latest endeavor, apple sorbet. But believe me, there is much, much more to come!

I took some more photos during the process which you can check out on Flickr.

Friday night I decided to try my hand at making a batch of watermelon sorbet using this recipe.  The recipe was really simple, there were only four ingredients – sugar, water, lemon juice and watermelon.  The outcome was absolutely delicious.

I picked up an ice cream cookbook, and I am going to be making a lot more sorbet and ice cream in the coming weeks.
You can see more sorbet photos on our Flickr page.

Yesterday was the first time this summer that we’ve grilled, which is kind of funny that we waited for a night that it rained. While I was waiting for the food on the grill, I also took pictures of my herbs.

Josh’s aunt and uncle watered them for us while we were in Washington DC and they grew a ton while we were away!  I tried to grow basil last year but killed it pretty quickly.  This year I went really overboard and bought a ton of different herbs, determined to keep them alive and they are flourishing!  The peppermint and oregano are both in their own containers because they are spreading so much.  I’ve got: Lemon Verbena, Parsley, Globe Basil, Sweet Basil, Curry, Arugula, Dill, Peppermint, and Golden Oregano.

I’ve used most of the herbs while cooking, but I haven’t yet used the peppermint or lemon verbena. However, I did recently get an ice cream maker so I might whip up a batch of mint ice cream and I might try out this recipe for blueberry lemon verbena ice cream.

You can see more herbtastic photos on our Flickr page.