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Coconut Sugar Scrub

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Tuesday, June 4, 2013

I scream, you scream…

I’ve always wanted an ice cream maker.  I’ve stayed away from them because 1) I don’t have a lot of room in my freezer and  2) my hips don’t need an ice cream maker in the house.

I love to cook, and cook a lot from scratch.  I’m happy to take shortcuts here and there, but the majority of my meals are cooked from scratch.  I like the idea of knowing what’s in my food and having control over it  (Type A personality right here)

Recently, I started hunting for coconut ice cream.  A friend and I had eaten lunch at a Thai place we go to often, but I never realized (or had room) for dessert; I never realized they had coconut ice cream! It was so creamy and delicious, and perfect after a spicy meal.  I still think about that ice cream, hence the beginning of the hunt.

The closest I could find to coconut ice cream was ice cream made with coconut milk at some local health food stores.  I won’t drop names because while it`s delicious, I think it’s  overpriced. I understand it’s a small business, and the stores selling it also need to make money, but at $9.00 per pint it’s not going to be in my budget on a regular basis.

So while grocery shopping last week…I walked by this:

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President’s Choice chill and stir ice cream maker.  It’s small, compact, and super cute!

And on sale.

At a regular price of $30, it wouldn’t blow the budget, but at $25, it jumped into my cart.

I did think about putting it back, remembering point #2 as previously expressed, but then realized that I could make my own coconut milk ice cream and it would only take a few batches to pay for itself.  I thought about all the fresh ingredients I could use to make frozen treats and happily walked to the checkout.

I put the bowl in the freezer as soon as I got home and started researching recipes.  I had some coconut milk in the pantry, so I started with coconut milk ice cream recipes.

I settled on this mint chip recipe from The Nourishing Gourmet (I know, you’d think I’d make coconut ice cream first, right? but I didn’t have any shredded coconut and had just! come back from the grocery store).

I let the base sit in the fridge overnight, as I had to wait for the ice cream bowl to freeze.

 

mint chocolate chip

I’m so happy with the way the coconut ice cream turned out.  It was really rich and creamy, you’d never know it was “good for you” ice cream.  I brought it to a friend’s place- she is quite the connoisseur of ice cream and she loved it too. 

I’ve been collecting ice cream recipes all week, and there are some healthy and some really indulgent ice creams out there, but now I’ve got a whole summer to experiment.

I tried making frozen yogurt yesterday, using Greek yogurt.  The recipe got rave reviews on the site where I found it, but mine was rock hard.  Even after leaving it out for 15 minutes, it was still rock hard and I actually broke the plastic container it was in when I tried to scoop it out.  I’ll probably try again, but it may not be for a while.

 

Do you have an ice cream maker? (or make ice cream without one?)

What’s your favourite flavour?

 

 

Saturday, June 1, 2013

Knitley Road- Tidalwave

If you remember, I brought back some amazing Cowichan yarn from BC, knit up some headbands and thought about dying the ivory yarn.  I bought some icing dye (because it’s non-toxic and I don’t have to worry about acids and fresh air, and a gas mask and such) and dyed some yarn green and made one headband.  I loved the process and seeing how the yarn absorbed the dye and then knitting it up.

If you follow me on Instagram, you may have seen the process.

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I wound up all the yarn I had into skeins and picked my colours. I decided not to dye anything more green and just to focus on the yellow and blue.

 

The blue looked lovely in the pot- the dye was Cornflower Blue.IMG_20130511_124936

 

While still lovely, when I took the yarn out, I realized there was a lot of purple in the yarn, and not quite the blue I had wanted. After some research, I realized there are some red pigments in blue dye, and while the Cornflower Blue I picked up was beautiful, it’s not one of the ‘true blue’ that some other fibre artists have used.   The mini skein had really lovely shades of purple, but the two larger skeins had too many light purple areas.  I think this was because I didn’t have a large enough pot for all the yarn so the dye didn’t pick up on all the fibres.  I had wanted to dye the large skeins together to give people enough yarn for a larger project, but I then had to dye them again, and did it separately.

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too much light purple

I dyed them each again and am so much happier with the results.  While each skein had the same amount of water and dye, one is slightly darker than the other.  The blue and purple in the yarn reminded me of the deep ocean, so I called this lot Tidalwave.

You can see a slight progression in the darkest the the lightest lot (the mini skein is the lightest)

SAMSUNG            SAMSUNG            SAMSUNG

 

All the yarn is now up in the Knitley Road shop; the large skeins are 50 yards, and the mini skein is 25 yards.  If you do need more than 50 yards, I’d recommend alternating rows of Tidalwave 001 and Tidalwave 002 to blend them in more naturally (the same way you may knit with variegated yarn to avoid colour bunching).  This yarn is classified as super bulky, however when I bought it, I was told it could be further spun if you wanted worsted weight (or maybe even more…while I’d love to learn, the last thing I need is another hobby- so no spinning for me!…yet)

 

I’ve got another colour to share with you, but the weather hasn’t been cooperating and it’s been difficult to find time to take pictures.

 

Happy Knitting!

 

 

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