Are You Here for the Recipe?
Brown Butter Ice Cream with Candied Pecans & Cranberry Wine Sauce Swirl
This brown butter ice cream has three main components: the brown butter ice cream base, a homemade cranberry wine sauce, and candied pecans. Each component can stand on its own, so if you're feeling overwhelmed, skip something.
Waste Not Want Not: Don't Pitch the Wine
I know "they" say the better the wine, the better the recipe, but I'm an advocate for waste not, want not. Every now and then, I won't get to that last glass of wine in the bottle, but rather than pitch it, I add it to the cooking wine bottle. Combine that wine with cranberries, pure maple syrup, and Chinese Five Spice, and you have a cranberry sauce that will wow the holiday table.
This ice cream recipe will yield more cranberry sauce than you need for the swirl because it's worth having extras to add to your yogurt, to a meat dish, or to the next holiday dinner.
Are You Here to Connect? Let's Talk About Time
I've been making my way through the book, The Way of Integrity by Martha Beck, which prompted me to dig into an incident in which my actions contradicted my intentions.
What was happening around me at that moment? What was I doing? What was I feeling? What was I thinking? What about right before the moment happened? And before that?
The deeper I dug, I realized my contradiction boiled down to two culturally ingrained beliefs:
- There isn't enough time.
- I'm not doing enough.
These thoughts didn't surprise me, but it was an aha moment to see how these thoughts pervaded the everyday. These two ingrained beliefs create a self-fulfilling prophesy. By focusing on too much at once, I create an inherent scarcity of time, and I rob myself of joy.
My antidote has been to clarify my priorities and my intentions, and to be realistic about time. This means giving myself the time, without layering on several other tasks, to create joyfully. This is a work in progress, but the results have been palpable.
I felt this shift most recently, as I swirled cranberry wine sauce through brown butter ice cream. Meanwhile, Dylan played a song from on the piano in the other room. I paused the podcast I was listening to and listened. It's a beautiful song from one of my favorite movies, and it stops me in my tracks every time.
The song froze the moment. I felt grateful for the time to experiment, to make something that inspired me, for his talent. I felt grateful that I, like Amélie, had grappled with feelings of loneliness and isolation, but I too had found deeper connections through opening myself to others.
Had I been in my typical rush, I would have missed the moment. I would have missed the magic of churning liquid into ice cream, of Paris memories coming to the surface, and the joyful anticipation for sharing my creation with those I love.
Society pushes us to push ourselves to depletion, to burn out, to a constant pursuit of external validation, but the good things take time. They require clarity and intention. Pies, homemade brown butter ice cream, relationships, piano songs, and dreams take time. That's the simple (not easy) truth.
This is what I'm exploring lately. What about you?
Are You Here for the Dogs?
If my crew became a rap album with a Victorian twist...
You Might Also Like: Twin Bing Cherry-Chocolate Popsicles with a Honey Buckwheat Crunch
Don't feel like churning ice cream? Here's a faster track to a frozen dessert. This popsicle, from my book, The Gluten-Free Grains Cookbook, is a frozen ode to my dad's favorite sweet - Twin Bing (if you're a Midwesterner, then you know). By alternating layers of unsweetened, pure dark cherries and homemade whipped cream, this version is a more wholesome version of my dad's favorite candy.
