Get everything ready, at hand, before starting. Once you’re all prepared it takes just minutes to cook and serve. Delicious sauce.

Recently my friend Linda T and I spent the weekend in the desert, and we cooked up a storm. Like we always do. I’ve already posted the roasted salmon with butter that was off-the-charts delicious, that we ate two nights in a row. The third night there Linda brought out these lettuce wraps. Well, she brought out all the various things, ground chicken and flavorings and seasonings to make them. She’d done all the hard work at home – numerous little Tupperware containers with various things in them. She assembled them near the cooktop because once you begin this dish you need to hover, watch, stir, add, stir, watch, adjust the heat, and in a matter of a few minutes it’s ready to eat.

The recipe comes from Linda’s daughter, Kristin, who is a great cook in her own right. (Hi Kris!)

First the red onion was chopped. It went into the pan with a tablespoon of olive oil and was cooked a bit. Then another tablespoon of oil was added to the pan and the ground chicken went in. Linda bought the mix of white and dark meat (more flavorful, I agree!), a pound. Once the chicken is mostly cooked most of the other ingredients go in – garlic, water chestnuts (after she’d added the water chestnuts, Linda realized she’d forgotten to chop them up) red pepper flakes, Gochujang paste (that’s the Korean spicy paste), soy sauce, honey, and Mirin (Japanese sweet white wine). That was stirred and cooked a bit as the sauce thickens. Then Linda added the chopped green onions and the essential (because of the intense delicious flavor it adds) dark sesame oil.

Meanwhile, we’d set the table, gotten out a big plate and I’d prepped some lettuce leaves (head lettuce, inner leaves that are more cupped in shape) for us. Linda quickly spooned the hot chicken into the lettuce cups and we sat down immediately. Linda’s recipe says it serves 3, but I think it could serve 4 if you’re not huge eaters, meaning about 4 ounces of chicken per person.

Linda sent the leftovers home with me, and I ate it for two dinners along with some steamed broccoli. Very filling and just delicious. The Gochujang sauce adds such a nice umami flavor to this – most grocery stores carry it these days, so do seek it out. It keeps forever in your refrigerator. If you’re watching salt, do use low-sodium soy sauce – most grocery stores carry that too, these days.

What’s GOOD: this mixture – chicken, chili, seasonings, is just SO tasty. Healthy for sure, only 2 T oil for the whole dish. It is messy, I’ll give you that, but worth every dribble and drip [napkins, please!]. Very worth making. The green onions add a nice pop of color.

What’s NOT: only that there IS some prep needed – chopping, mincing and a bunch of little measuring of things. That will take 5-10 minutes, I suppose. The liquid things could be combined into a measuring cup and set aside for later to make it easier.

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Lemon flavored anything hits lots of flavor notes for me. Here’s a new recipe that is easy for a weeknight dinner, but would also be nice for a company meal.

Being in the mood for a chicken dish, for New Years’ Day I decided to defrost a package or two of chicken thighs (my fav). I’m watching my  carbs, so wanted a dish that accented flavor and didn’t contain pasta, grains or rice, etc. This recipe (the original) came from Food52, and it utilized a whole chicken, spatchcocked. It didn’t take a lot to adapt it to using chicken thighs.

What you see there in the photo is the baked chicken thigh (skinless, boneless), covered in a spice and herb mixture, and then that “sauce”  on top. No browning of the chicken is necessary. But first into a casserole dish you slice an onion and scatter it all over. Then add a couple of smashed and chopped garlic cloves, then layer on sliced lemon. Then the seasoned chicken goes on top. The seasoning has a bunch of different things in it – turmeric, thyme, oregano, sumac, paprika and ras al hanout. My DIL gave me a little jar of it recently, but you can make your own easily enough. Spruce Eats has a good, easy recipe for it if you don’t own some. It’s a Moroccan 13 spice mixture. You could easily just add pinches of those spices, and likely you’ll have all of them on your spice shelf.

Into the oven the casserole goes, for about 45 minutes (thighs). Breasts would be less time. A spatchcocked chicken would likely be  an hour. Until an instant read thermometer reads 160-165°F. Then comes the FUN part. Remove the chicken to a serving plate, then spoon out the onion/lemon/garlic mixture from the bottom of the casserole dish and put it on a cutting board (that has channels on the side  – because this is oozy). Use a big chef’s knife and chop like crazy until the mass is not quite mush. You want some texture, but be sure to cut up the lemon pieces well enough.

The original recipe had you serve that board sauce mixture on the bottom then place the chicken on top, but I wanted the “sauce” on top, so did it differently. And I didn’t incorporate much of the juice, either. If you used thighs with skin, it might look beautiful the other way, but I used boneless, skinless, so put the sauce on top. Your choice.

The originator of this recipe obviously came up with the title of a “board sauce” and that’s exactly what it is. Of course, with a spatchcocked chicken, it would go onto a cutting board too and ooze juices as well.

What’s GOOD: everything about this chicken was delicious. Love-loved the sauce with the tiny bits of lemon peel – just enough to know you were eating lemon peel, but not enough to make you think “sour.” Not at all. If you’re wanting a carb, I think rice would be good because that lemony sauce would be good with the rice. I made zucchini to go with it. Altogether wonderful lemony chicken. Just what I wanted. As I mentioned, this would make a great company meal too as it makes that wonderful sauce.

What’s NOT: not a single thing.

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Just the simplest of soups – although there are a LOT of vegetables in it, but the more the merrier, and the merrier the taste. I wasn’t expecting it to be so delicious!

A post from Carolyn. I don’t know about you, but after the holidays, of not-so-healthy eating, desserts served more often and just plain eating more than I usually do, I was so ready for some pure foods, healthier. My refrigerator had a bunch of vegetables and some had to be tossed in the trash, but what was there surely was enough to make a delicious soup. As I’m writing this, we’ve had rain – rain – and more rain. It’s so good for our soil as we’ve been in years of drought, so I’m not complaining. A rainy day makes me want to cook, as long as I don’t have other things I have to do. My usual busy routine has started up but I had a free day, and it was raining.

Often, when I look at recipes for vegetable soup, I think eh, veggie soup doesn’t have enough flavor to make me happy. But I decided to try it anyway since I had so many veggies that needed to be used. I’m SO glad I did, as this soup was scrumptious, and well worth making again.

Into a big pot went a sweet onion and leeks, with some olive oil. As that sweated I chopped up all the vegetables (red bells, poblanos, zucchini, yellow squash, a sweet potato, celery, carrots, garlic) and added them all at once.

Last month at the cooking class in San Diego, Phillis Carey mentioned how much she loves the new Better Than Bouillon Seasoned Vegetable Base. Picture at right. She also mentioned the same brand for chicken, the Roasted Chicken Base. I’ve bought both. And I also bought their Chili Base too, since I make more than a fair share of chili-based soups. All of them are available on amazon (use the links to get right to the pages).

All of these concentrates contain a goodly amount of sodium, so I didn’t add a single grain of salt to this soup. I added water, the vegetable paste/base, some oregano and thyme (my go-to herbs). Once the vegetables were done I removed some of it and whizzed it up with my immersion blender and poured it back into the soup (just to give the soup some thickened texture).

Then I added a little tiny can of corn and a big mound of grated Cheddar. Than I added a can of coconut cream. Now, about that. I buy Trader Joe’s coconut cream when I want that creamy texture, but I don’t want to taste coconut. TJ’s brand doesn’t taste like coconut. Neither their coconut cream or coconut milk has much of any taste of coconut. In this case, that’s what I wanted. I wasn’t making a coconut soup with vegetables, I merely wanted the creamy texture. If you want coconut milk that tastes like coconut, do buy Thai Kitchen. I buy it from a Costco that’s not near me at all as not all Costco’s carry it. Or use the link for amazon.

I scooped about a cup of soup into the bowl, added some grated Cheddar on top and a sprig of Italian parsley. Done.

What’s GOOD: altogether delicious. Healthy for sure. Lots of flavor (maybe it’s the broth that did it – but surely all the various veggies contributed too). The soup has some heat from the poblano chiles. If you’re sensitive to heat, use just one, or substitute green bell peppers. I don’t like green bell peppers, so you’ll almost never see them in my cooking repertoire! This recipe is a keeper in my book, and that’s saying something since I’m a bit reluctant to even make vegetable soup since I assume it’ll be blah. Not so with this one.

What’s NOT: really nothing. It’s a very flavorful soup. Relatively low in calorie too. A keeper, and yes, I’ll be making it again. It should freeze well.

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One of my go-to quick, easy and healthy weekday meals. 

This post is from Sara:  I found the original recipe on Delish.com which is a favorite healthy recipe website for me.  I mostly plan my week’s meals out on Sunday and shop accordingly so that I don’t have to make several trips to the grocery store after work.  However, there are those days that I am not in the mood for my plan or life happens and dinner plans change.  This is one of the fast, easy and healthy recipes I love to make.  It’s a one-pan dish and I usually have everything on hand as it’s fairly common ingredients, at least in my household.  If I don’t have fresh basil, I almost always have pesto sauce that can be substituted.

I serve it with a salad and some balsamic vinaigrette that I add a tsp of pesto sauce to bring up the flavor.  You could also add pasta if you don’t have an aversion to carbs.  Or, like me, you have teenagers that need more calories.  I love this dish because of the fresh ingredients.  I always have grape tomatoes in my fridge as I eat them as a snack daily.  I used fresh mozzarella because I prefer it but regular mozzarella or provolone would work.

Having made this a few times, I found that I prefer to slice the chicken breasts horizontally into two thinner slices.  This keeps my portion size down and gives me leftovers for lunch the next day!  Another bonus of this recipe is to make enough for leftovers so I add the cold chicken cut up to a salad with tomatoes, fresh mozzarella bits and the pesto balsamic vinaigrette dressing.

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You might think you don’t need a recipe for a fruit salad, right? But if you’d like to serve a fruit salad that’s just a bit different, you could try this one. You just have to plan ahead a few hours or overnight (to make the flavorful syrup) to serve this with a brunch. It’s well worth making.

Ginger seems to be on my radar lately. And if I were to just add a vanilla bean to the stem ginger in syrup that I made last week, I’d have had half of this recipe already done! In this case you make a simple syrup with fresh ginger, a vanilla bean and a bunch of lemon peel. That does need to be made ahead as it provides a ton of flavor to the fruit once you mix it all together.

Once that mixture has cooled and the solid stuff (ginger, vanilla bean and lemon peels) strained out, you’re left with this delicious ginger/vanilla essence syrup. You could just slurp it with a spoon. Trust me on that one! (If you have leftovers of the syrup, it would be lovely added to a cup of hot tea.) But we’re making a fruit salad, so all you do is add in all the fruit. You could change what YOU like to have in the way of fruit – at the class Phillis Carey used Navel oranges, mangoes, bananas, kiwis, grapes and pomegranate seeds. It was a beautiful and very tasty combination. You could add apples, pears or pineapple too. Your choice.

What’s GOOD: the flavoring in the syrup is what makes this. The ginger gives the syrup just a teeny tiny bit of heat and the vanilla adds a depth to it – perhaps not distinguishable, but it makes for one very tasty bowl of fruit. The pomegranate seeds add a lovely color to the presentation too.

What’s NOT: really nothing except that you do have to plan ahead one day or at least half a day to make this.

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Remember, I told you we’d be fixing that chicken dish – the one that my hubby made for me on about our 3rd or 4th date, way back 32 years ago? Here it is . . . you make it all in one pan (except for a carb if you choose to make one). It’s incredibly easy.

If you didn’t read my post a few days ago about my hubby Dave’s favorites, you won’t have the back story on this dish. Go read that if you care to. Here’s a bit more of the background. In 1981, Dave and his son lived about a block or two from our local fairgrounds, and often on Saturdays they’d go over to the weekly swap meet there (that still goes on at that location). Dave remembers vividly one Saturday as they walked up and down the rows, that he could smell something wonderful. Finally they came to a stand where a couple of Aussie guys were making chicken. It was only about 9:30 in the morning, and both Dave and his son gobbled down a sample of this dish, and Dave promptly bought a set of seasonings from this company, Benson’s Gourmet Seasonings.

The company is still in business, and this recipe – the same one they were fixing at the swap meet in 1981, is still the one they demonstrate, and is their #1 selling mixture. It uses their Supreme Garlic and Herb Salt Free Seasoning 2 oz Bottle – the link here is to Amazon, and they carry the whole line, if you’re interested.

Dave made this dish for me, back in 1981 right after I met him, and he made it at least one other time, and the bottles of seasoning mixes have sat dormant on my pantry shelf ever since. Not in the regular place, but Dave didn’t want to throw them away – when we moved to this house 10 years ago I was going to toss them out. You know, herb and spice mixtures lose all their potency after a few weeks or at most a month. But Dave said, no, don’t throw them out. So they sat in an obscure and out of the way space. I generally don’t use those pre-packed seasoning mixes just because I know they don’t retain flavor well. I like to make my own combos at the moment when I need them. The only one I’ve been known to make in quantity is the North African Grilled Corn on the Cob spice mix. I make up a batch at the beginning of corn season and try to use it up by the time corn season has passed.

Having laughed over the chicken dinner story the other day, I dug out the bottle (that is 32 years old), went online, not expecting to find anything, and found the company’s website and their recipe easily enough. And decided that Dave needed to renew his acquaintance with this dish.

Here he is at our kitchen island. I cut up a whole chicken for him (next time we will make it with just chicken thighs, I think – much easier). I set him there at the cutting board with all of the vegetables he needed to chop. A lot. First you must have half a chopped onion and half a bell pepper. This dish takes 60 minutes to make, hence you want to start with medium-low heat. The herb mixture is added in at 3 junctures in the process.

The pictures here show the progression of the dish. First you put the raw chicken pieces in there (no seasonings, no oil, nothing) in a big honkin’ pan (we used a 12-inch nonstick pan with 4” high sides) skin side down with the heat at medium-low. The first set of veggies are added on top and down in any crevices you can find.

In the 2nd picture, after 20 minutes, you turn the chicken over. See, nicely browned chicken pieces.

Then after another 20 minutes of browning you add all the vegetables (more onion, peppers, zucchini, carrots, celery and mushrooms). The veggies kind of sit there on top and you wonder if they’ll ever cook through.

Ten minutes later  you stir it all up (you do that several times so the veggies will get done). You never add a lid. But you do add 1/2 cup of white wine (we used vermouth) during the last 10 minutes and continue cooking until the chicken is done and the veggies are cooked.

Actually, we removed the chicken pieces to a hot plate and very briefly cooked the veggies for about 2 minutes – there were a few pieces of carrot and zucchini that weren’t quite done.

Meanwhile, make some rice. We made pasta (Dave’s choice), but I really think it would be easier to eat and more tasty with rice. Your choice, of course. I made linguine and thought it was too difficult to handle.

There is NO SALT in this dish. There is NO FAT added to this dish. And it’s delicious. Because the spice mixture was SO old, I measured out double the amount of it (so 2 T. rather than just 1). I think I need to order a new bottle, although the seasoning did have some smell and taste.

What’s GOOD: it’s a make-in-one-pot kind of dinner (except for a carb if you choose to make one). There’s lots of good flavor in it. It’s easy, really, but you do need to do a bunch of veggie chopping and prepping. Makes a big batch – I think it might feed more than 4 if you have a larger chicken. We had a 4-pound one and will likely get 3 meals out of it. It’s a pretty dish – lots of color. We don’t like green bell pepper, but it would have added even more color to the pan. The wine makes a kind of juicy sauce (unthickened, of course) – scoop some of it out with each serving onto the carb. Love that this has not one speck of added salt or added oil. You won’t miss it – really.
What’s NOT: just the time you need to spend tending to this – not hard – but you don’t want to go off and leave this as it requires a lot of chopping at first, then mixing around during the last 20 minutes. The chicken breasts were a little overdone, we thought, so I’d probably add them later or remove them early.

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Hearty, comforting and healthy soup. There’s no cream in it – the broccoli provides the creamy texture. I know that sounds strange, but it’s true. Read on . . .

Rarely do I watch The Chew. The show is so fast-paced (frantic almost, like The View which I refuse to watch at all because they all talk over each other) and loud that I will only watch it on occasion and rarely do I ever try one of the recipes. A few over the years . . . but I know the show is well liked by many. When we were on our trip I happened to turn on TV and I tuned in to the program and Stacy London [a TV fashionista and co-host of the show What Not to Wear, another show I don’t watch] was making a soup. She had someone come to her home to cook for her and this recipe was borne of that professional relationship, as I understood it. Apparently, she had leftovers of both a healthy pureed broccoli soup and one with white beans and sausage and Stacy decided to combine the two. She loves it so much that she learned to make it herself and eats it by the gallon.

It’s no secret around here that I love soups. Not only for their ease (a meal in one pot) but soups are comforting and provide infinite variety. And often I add a little jot of cream to soups. This soup looked like it had cream in it, but it doesn’t. Nary a bit of cream or dairy at all. Basically you make 2 soups – a broccoli soup in one pot (which gets pureed and becomes the liquid in the other soup) and the spicy sausage and cannellini bean soup in the other. Once the broccoli soup is cooked through (takes no time at all) it’s whizzed up in the blender and then that’s added to the other. Because I had some mushrooms on hand, I added them, and I think I added some zucchini too, though neither of those were in the recipe.

The only fat in the entire soup is a tablespoon or two of olive oil to sauté the onions, the same for the chicken sausage soup plus whatever intrinsic fat is in chicken broth and the chicken sausage (not much, in other words).

Adapting the recipe a little, I added some fresh mushrooms and zucchini to the soup. Why not, I said? I wanted more veggies and texture since the broccoli is completely pureed. The recipes serves 8, and that’s about right – we had 2 dinners and 2 or 3 lunches out of the one preparation. I’m sure it would freeze well also.

What’s GOOD: I like that it’s a very healthy soup. I really had to work at it to taste the broccoli (and I like broccoli) since it’s pureed. You honestly think it’s a cream soup! My DH liked it a lot and told me each time I served it that it was really good. I felt the same way. A keeper. It’s not gourmet. It’s not over-the-top with flavor, but it’s just wholesome and good. It’s thick – you can see that from the photo. If you wanted a lighter soup, add more chicken broth and thin it some.
What’s NOT: nothing at all that I can think of.

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A luscious salad – different – healthy, really – because it doesn’t have all that much oil in it – hard to believe it could taste so good! Dried figs give it a base, and you do add some crumbled bacon.

Having been asked to bring a salad to dinner at friends recently, I ransacked my to-try file, to find something that would complement Thomas Keller’s Roast Chicken and Vegetables, which my friend Donna was going to make. Donna reads my blog (thank you, Donna!) and is always so kind to tell me how much she likes it. Music to any blogger’s ears, I’ll tell ya!

It didn’t really take much to make this dressing – it’s an interesting one – it uses dried figs, balsamic vinegar (I used a fruit-flavored one, but you can use plain too), water, chicken broth (yes, really, chicken broth), honey, shallots and fresh thyme. All things I had on hand. The figs are simmered for

just a minute in the balsamic vinegar and allowed to “steep” or sit while you pull together the rest of the ingredients. Then it’s all whizzed up in the blender. Meanwhile, I chopped up and fried a bunch of bacon. I made this salad twice, on consecutive nights, and used different greens. I couldn’t find arugula the first day, so I substituted Romaine, leaf lettuce and microgreens. I actually think the salad needs some bitter greens to offset the fig-sweetened dressing, so the second time my DH was able to find arugula and I used Feta cheese  that time, rather than the cotija I’d tried the first time. The original recipe (from Cooking Light) called for goat cheese, but I didn’t have any. Nor did I really want to buy a log of goat cheese when I only needed a little bit for the salad. I almost always have Feta on hand, which keeps soaking in brine for many, many weeks. I did have cotija (it’s a dry, salty Mexican cheese that’s used mostly for garnish), so I used that one time.

The second night (pictured above) I had arugula, but not quite enough dressing, so I just added more EVOO and another little jot of balsamic vinegar to what I had left from the previous night, and it was plenty for a salad for 4.

What’s good: the low-calorie, low-fat aspect of the dressing. Of course, bacon kind of puts it over the top, but once you divide it among several people, no one has all that much bacon. I added pine nuts one night just because I thought the salad needed some kind of crunch to it. Since it doesn’t have any added vegetables, I really did think it needed some added texture.

What’s not: nothing at all – just know this isn’t any standard kind of vinaigrette – it’s sweet from the figs, but will complement lots of meals – pork for sure – often pork is accompanied by fruit.

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No, I’m not joshing you. And no, these aren’t made of cardboard, either. Cardboard would have carbs perhaps? From tree bark and fiber? Nope, these are made from tofu and some kind of
Asian yam. I’m sure I have some readers who, after just seeing that word tofu – will not even read further. I might have been one of those some years ago. I don’t eat tofu, as tofu, but if it’s in other things, well, yes I do. These noodles have almost zero calories, nearly zero carbs, zero fat in a single serving.

It’s not news on this blog that we are a family of two try to limit carbs, what with my Type 1 diabetic husband. And certainly I can cut down on them myself. But I’ll tell you true – I miss pasta. Once in awhile – a big splurge for us – I make a huge batch of spaghetti sauce from one of my numerous recipes (my favorite one this year is Ina Garten’s Weeknight Bolognese Sauce). I freeze some of it for other dinner splurges months hence. Well, we’re now going to be able to have all we want because of these fantastic new products.

I’d heard about them several months ago when I got an email from one of the daily deal emails I subscribe to, offering me “Miracle Noodles” for some unbelievably low cost. I knew nothing whatsoever about them. I talked to a friend of mine, a recent Type 2 diabetic, who is struggling with her revised diet, to ask if she’d like to share the box with me. It was 29 packages or some odd number. She said no. Knowing so little, I opted not to buy it, either. Then I visited a local Asian market, thinking that surely they would have them – indeed they did, although it wasn’t the “Miracle” noodle, but Tofu Shirataki (the fettucine and angel hair varieties shown here), and it took the store manager’s involvement to find them in the store. Aha! In the refrigerated area – not really near anything in particular – and they were lying flat, so you couldn’t see the package front very well. FYI: a 4-ounce serving (half of the above package) contains 20 calories, .5 grams of fat, 15 mg of sodium and 3 g of carbs. And 1 g of fiber. As I’m writing this, I haven’t had the Miracle Noodle yet – I’ll probably write up another post after that with more info.

Each package holds about 8 ounces including the fluid – and about 4 ounces of net wet noodles – enough for 2 side servings. And just maybe enough for a small serving of a pasta main dish. These packages need to be refrigerated and they’ll keep for about 6 months. They don’t ever spoil, really, but eventually, the noodle may dissolve into its primary form of glucomannen (that’s the tofu and yam product).

I threw together a side dish to serve them the first time. I had no recipe, but wanted to make it a little special for the first time we’d eat them since I wasn’t certain my DH would eat them – he did and he liked them. He loves pasta too, and encourages me to NOT make it very often since it wreaks havoc with his blood sugar. The thing you need to remember is that these noodles, like most tofu products, don’t have much taste straight out of the package, so you must add flavorful ingredients to them, so they’ll soak up the flavor. Don’t just heat them with a little oil or butter and expect them to have great flavor. They won’t.

The other thing about these noodles is that they’re packed in a rather unappetizing fluid (that you drain off). It smells something like Asian fish sauce. In case you haven’t ever taken a sniff of Asian fish sauce, well, it’s not pleasant – kind of like rotten fish, actually. Tastes great, but doesn’t smell all that nice. So, there is a process of getting the noodles ready to eat. First, drain them, then rinse well under running water. According to the package instructions, I put them on a plate and microwaved them for 60 seconds. You can also “cook” them in a nonstick pan until they make a kind of squeaky sound in the pan, but microwaving is almost easier. I rinsed them again, drained again, then they went into the skillet. They’re already cooked, you see, so they don’t really need further cooking – just heating – but they need to absorb flavor. So I stirred them around, added the dairy stuff, some herbs and cayenne, and let them sit in the pan just barely simmering. I had to add a little water as the creamy ingredients boiled away, tasted it for salt and pepper, added the grated cheese and served it piping hot.

What I liked: the fact that they’re very similar – not identical – to a wheat noodle, but have so few calories and carbs. That’s the logical answer, of course. Why would we bother to eat these unless they were giving us some kind of nutritional boon. Or if I needed to restrict gluten. Obviously these are GF also.
What I didn’t like: if you forced me to say something negative (I’m trying to be at least neutral or unbiased), the texture of these noodles aren’t the same as a wheat pasta fettuccine noodle. It doesn’t have the same kind of “chew” as a wheat noodle – more like a rice noodle to me. But if you know going into it that you’re wanting a vehicle for the SAUCE – it’s the sauce we love, right? – then these noodles absolutely work. All in all, this is a great alternative to a much higher calorie wheat noodle.

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The title is a little bit of a misnomer – it really should be something like Buttermilk Peach Sorbet, or Buttermilk Peach Ice or maybe Peach Sherbet. Not a name with “cream” in the title since there isn’t any cream in it. But we lump all kinds of these frozen confections under “ice cream”  whether they’re made with cream or milk or whatever.

If peaches are still in season around your home, do make an effort to go get some gorgeously ripe peaches, peel them and briefly cook them in a little water, then freeze packets of it. You can then make summery ice cream any month of the year. I just hate to take up valuable freezer space with frozen peaches. My freezer is something of a problem – it’s FULL. And I mean FULL. I could probably get a few frozen chicken breasts in there, and maybe a few very flat things. But that’s about it. I am trying, really I am – to defrost and eat things out of the freezer but then I find some new thing that has to go in there. If I had a full-on stand-alone freezer in the garage it would probably be full too. I need a 12-step program for me and my freezer problem. Want to start one?

Anyway, back to this dessert. The recipe came from Rick Rodgers. I’ve had it for several years, I think, but hadn’t gotten around to making it. But with peaches on the kitchen counter, well, this is what I did with them. I DO want you to read the nutritional info about this recipe – it’s really super low calorie and has a TRACE of fat in a serving. Is that great, or what?

If you’re expecting this to taste rich and creamy like Häagen–Dazs, it won’t be. It’s more like ice milk. I think you need to be “of a certain age” to remember ice milk. My mother used to buy it all the time (this would have been the 1950’s) when I was growing up, but I don’t think I’ve seen it in years. I read online that it went “out” in the 1960’s when low-fat milk was produced. My dad had a passion for ice cream in any way, shape or form. In his 80’s he had to start eating sugar-free, but he still loved it. We all kidded him because after eating a small bowl (my mother would never serve a big bowl of it) he’d systematically scrape his spoon up the sides, from the bottom center and up, all the way around, until he’d made a full circle. My dad was an engineer, so we’re not talkin’ a few scrapes, I mean maybe 20-30 per bowl. To get every single, solitary, last drop. If there’s a gene for ice cream, I’ve at least inherited some of his passion for the stuff. I try not to indulge, but I do. This recipe makes it a heck of a lot better for me/us.

Wanting to make this particular one more eating-friendly for my diabetic hubby, I made it with half Splenda. I DID use the 1/2 cup of brown sugar, though, in the mixture, because brown sugar has a unique caramel-like taste and I’d never thought about using brown sugar with peaches. It’s a match made in heaven, I’m telling you!

It’s a simple recipe to make – don’t forget to add the almond extract – that’s also a little bit different, and I loved the taste of it. It’s not overpowering but just adds another layer of flavor. The recipe indicates you can make this without an ice cream machine. I did use mine, and when it first came out it was soft in texture, but once frozen for a few hours it was almost rock hard. So my only suggestion about this recipe is: let it sit out for about 20+ minutes before trying to scoop it. That’s what I had to do to get the photo up top. If you’re willing to eat a more icy type “ice cream,” and want the low in fat and calorie type, this may be a new favorite for you. Given the choice of this and full fat, well, of course the full-fat has better flavor, but if you want to cut back, give this one a try.

What I liked: the brown sugar and almond extract add great layers of flavor in this. Just don’t expect it to be soft, scoop-able like ice cream – it’s more icy or sherbet-like. We loved it. Next time I am going to add 2 T. of Peach Pucker Schnapps to the mixture (any alcohol added to home made ice cream helps with the scooping ability), not only for the softness aspect of it, but also to add even more flavor (although it doesn’t really need it – it’s full of peachy flavor as it is).

What I didn’t like: having to let it defrost for 20+ minutes is a bit of a nuisance, that’s all. Otherwise, nothing.

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