Why do melons always have big weddings?

We've been buying quite a lot of melon for our small, three-person household because they're so perfectly in season, so wonderfully refreshing, and they just smell so damn good that it's worth the extra weight on the mile walk home from the farmers' market. And, to make room for the new melons, we have to eat up the old ones, resulting in this cantaloupe sorbet from David Lebovitz's The Perfect Scoop. Some advice:

1. If your melon happens to be less-than-perfectly ripe and flavorful, add another lime. Or, if you like lime, add another lime. For instance, when Lebovitz wrote "1 teaspoon freshly squeezed lime, plus more to taste." I read it as "one lime, plus another one." It might make the sorbet's texture a little coarser, but it will completely overwhelm the cantaloupe's inadequacies.

2. If you need to test the white wine in the back of the fridge to make sure it hasn't turned into vinegar, don't use the mini plastic teddybear cup you found in the back of the drawer because a) the four-year-old watching Toy Story with your dad will want some and b) it's probably covered in 20-year-old lead paint from China.

3. When your mum mentions that her second-hand mixer might run a little different because your uncle tinkered with the motor a bit before giving it to her, that means that he made it go twice as fast and it doesn't have a low setting and it may not be ideal for churning sorbet and you should just put it away on top of the fridge and replace it with the one you got from your grandma, which doesn't know about warp speed yet.

4. Don't leave your lens cap out on the counter.

5. Don't worry too much about the four-year-old angling for that plastic cup of white wine; she's much more interested in raspberries.

Cantaloupe Sorbet [with a lot of lime]

Adapted from David Lebovitz's "The Perfect Scoop"

Chop up the meat of 

One 2-pound ripe cantaloupe

Purée in a blender with

1/2 cup sugar

pinch of salt

the juice of one or two small limes, or if you have a really good melon, maybe just a teaspoon.

Add

2 tablespoons white wine or Champagne

Chill thoroughly, then freeze in an ice cream maker that your uncle hasn't tampered with.  

(Because they can't elope.)

An unexpected love affair with Filbert.

The recipe sounded, felt, smelled, looked, tasted like poetry.

Warm, roasted hazelnuts rolling free of their skins in a clean kitchen towel, milk chocolate flakes melted by hot cream, sweet, nutty milk stirred into a custard, every step was a beautiful, satisfying aroma of things to come.

Engaging in some light reading with The Perfect Scoop, my dad bookmarked the recipe for gianduja gelato.

I might have passed over it, favoring fruit flavors in this late summer season, and preferring bitter dark chocolates to the creamy milks.

It may be the best ice cream I've ever eaten.

But please, disregard the instruction to "discard the hazelnuts" after infusing the milk with the roasted, ground nuts. They can be put back in the oven, covered with the milky, sugary residue, and roasted until they become the perfect crispy topping to sprinkle over the thick, rich, smooth gianduja gelato.

Because we don't have enough ice cream in the freezer already.

Last weekend I drove down to Santa Barbara to visit my grandmother, and to pick up a slightly used, underutilized kitchen unit for my own use.

When we returned, plus one standing mixer and one grandmother, waiting for me in my parents' freezer was an additional gift.

Then, in our meanderings, my grandmother found some apricots at the local corner grocery that were nearly exploding with over-ripeness.

Luckily, as of last week, I happened to have David Lebovitz's book The Perfect Scoop - which includes a very simple apricot sorbet recipe.

And so, all these lovely gifts from my family came together in the form of an intense scoop of sweet, cold apricot.

As the saying goes, the best gifts are the ones that keep on giving.

It was almost like it was my birthday or something.

What I Did During My Summer Vacation

Life and cooking have had their ups and downs lately, a little more of each than usual. But the good moments outweigh the bad, so that's alright then.

Oh, and I moved back to California. For good. And just in time for tomatoes.

(I still love Philly though! But I hella love Oakland.)

Hot, Hot, Hot

The weather is getting really hot and sticky here, and by that I mean that it's getting inappropriate and taking off all its clothes. Time to break out the ice cream maker and the spicy peppers.

When my increasingly frequent partner-in-crime demanded that we make ice cream with his stash of extra- spicy habañeros, I grabbed David Lebovitz's excellent cookbook and did a quick google search. We couldn't find a recipe that did exactly what we wanted, but it seemed well within our comfort zone of slightly odd but totally edible and maybe even tasty cooking projects.

We were wrong. This ice cream went above and beyond tasty. The only think I would change is the quantities. More of everything.

Especially more habañeros. We candied them for about an hour, which gave them a lovely texture and flavor, with a mild - but still present - spiciness. They were perfect, but due to concerns about the spiciness, we only processed three chilis. Next time I'd do everything exactly the same, but up the number of habañeros used.

The candied chili peppers were subtle enough that we needed a low-key ice cream to accentuate their flavors. David Lebovitz's vanilla ice cream recipe did not disappoint. The smooth, rich vanilla made an excellent showcase.

This is one of those recipes that I plan on coming back to, and I'm so happy to have discovered it in the first week of this hot Philadelphia summer.

The only problem is what to do with the intensely spicy simple syrup left over after the candying process. We've bandied around a few ideas - put a few drops in drinks, use it to candy bacon, put some in the actual ice cream - but for now it's in the freezer, with a warning sign in large lettering. Suggestions welcome!

Vanilla-Habañero Ice cream

Wash well:

6-10 habañero chili peppers

De-seed peppers, and slice into small pieces. Don't touch your eyes or your face or any material objects. You are now covered in spicy.

Boil together:

1 cup sugar

2 cups water

Add chili pepper pieces and simmer for an hour. Strain out chilis, reserving syrup for another use (if we can figure one out...). Dry overnight, then place in a freezer.

Make David Lebovitz's easy, delicious:

vanilla ice cream

Once the ice cream has churned, stir in the frozen habañero pieces. Freeze until stiff, serve.

This was particularly excellent after we ate Matt's spicy chorizo as part of his monthly Charcutepalooza challenge. That recipe, although we made a few variations (mostly on amount and type of chili pepper) can be found here.

This is how Californians deal with East Coast summers.

Peach Sorbet

Remember all those peaches we peeled for all those alcoholic drinks? We saved some. Because in the summer heat, a four ingredient recipe for peach sorbet is not something you should pass up. This recipe, courtesy (as always) of David Lebovitz, is possibly the easiest, most simplistic, and most flexible use of an ice cream maker yet. And quite likely the most delicious. Although that credit should probably go to the peaches.

Chop up the peeled peaches.

 Cook them in a bit of water until soft.

 Add some sugar.

Blend.

Add some lemon juice and chill.

Freeze in the ice cream maker.

The sorbet that comes out of the ice cream maker, unlike the other frozen things I've made, was ready to eat immediately - it has a very stiff texture. We put it in the freezer anyway, and had it later that night.

Here's where my recipe deviates a little from the original. Or not so much of a deviation as another use for this lovely sorbet. Once it was done churning, we scooped out a little extra sorbet into two glasses and poured some chilled, peachified white wine over it, making a very refreshing, thick, peachy drink.

It's like a light, wine-based smoothie!

I think this sorbet might be the most flavorful thing to come out of all my summer ice cream maker experiments so far. And clearly peaches have completely hijacked my summer. Which, well, who could complain?