Weighing in the Balance

Quick! Everyone come over to my boyfriends apartment. The bathroom scale is handing out really low numbers!

It's interesting: I first lost a lot of weight (25-30 pounds) back in high school, when I became a vegetarian. Now I've been losing weight since I started eating more traditional, simple foods, eliminating sugar and refined carbohydrates. I haven't seen today's number (141 pounds) since college, when I would eat only undressed salad for dinner and went to the gym at least five days a week.

Here's the results of a great food experiment conducted yesterday:

Blackberry Cabernet Sorbet

Mix 1 package frozen blackberries (about a pint), 1/2 C honey, and 1 1/2 C cabernet (of a decent quality--don't cook with any wine you wouldn't drink!) in a small saucepan. Heat on low for about 45 - 60 minutes, squashing the blackberries against the side of the pan. Cool to room temperature and strain through a sieve, once again crushing the berries as much as you can to extract all the juicy goodness. (I saved the leftover pulp to mix with yogurt.) Chill the strained liquid in the refrigerator, then process in an ice cream maker.

The flavor was really intense. It tasted so good that I almost didn't want to share it with my darling boyfriend, who requested it in the first place, but I saved a cup for myself in my freezer and gave him the rest for his. It does not freeze very solid--there's obviously a lot of alcohol still left in the wine--so perhaps next time I will let it simmer longer. And double the recipe.

Strawberry fields

On vacation for a week, sick for a week. Still finishing up the illness, in fact, though I can tell I'm on the mend because I'm being productive once again. Especially in the kitchen.

After reading Tartelette's recent post about blueberry sorbet-filled macarons, I was in the mood to try my hand at homemade sorbet. Alas! I live in a land where blueberries are not laying in flats around every corner. There were a few baskets still available at the farmers' market, but in nothing even close to my price range. So I went with the old So Cal standby this time of year: strawberries. Pesticide free!

Three baskets were $4. A half flat of six baskets was $5. I bought the half flat, thinking, "I'm going to need a lot of berries for sorbet."

Eh...not so much. Here's the recipe I went with, out of my Cuisinart ice cream maker recipe book: 1 C sugar + 1 C water to make a simple syrup, 1/4 C corn syrup, 1 quart strawberries, hulled, pureed, and shoved through a strainer. Mix well, chill, and then process in the maker. Currently everything is at the "chilling" stage. I do, however, have a delightfully red goo taking up space in my fridge, which is always a plus.

So I used up 2 pints. Which leaves me with four. What am I going to do with four pints of strawberries? Yes, I know: eat them. However, I know they're not going to keep in the fridge for that long, which means I may have to tip into the recipe in a section at the back of the book, which specializes in boozy frozen drinks.

Strawberry daquiris, anyone?

So now I have four pints left.