the slump

IT’S BEEN ONE OF THOSE WEEKS.  The ones where nothing goes right in the kitchen.  The pan was too hot for the eggs I scrambled on Saturday (my simple-weekend-staple with goat cheese that never, never fails), my well-honed melon-divining skills failed me on Sunday, and I even messed up the rice in Monday’s dinner.  Rice!  As Jo March would say, I couldn’t boil water without burning it.  (Very close to it, actually — the water and jasmine rice boiled, then burned.)

I like to think that Ina Garten and Bobby Flay have those days, too.  The ones where the vegetables burn while the chicken remains undercooked, where the jam won’t set to save its life, where the butter that you’re trying to help soften just a little bit suddenly becomes very yellow, very melted butter.  I would like to think that Julia Child had a cooking slump once in her life.

I suppose this is a roundabout apology for no real new post this week.  I finally gave up, and as the temperatures rose and my cooking slump worsened, I finally succumbed and went off the grid.  I put away the camera, took out a spoon and  four ingredients and the ice cream maker M. and I got as a wedding gift and made undocumented, no pressure peach ice cream.  The recipe was in the Food Network Magazine’s editor’s note, and combines 14 oz. condensed milk, 8-9 peeled, pitted and sliced peaches, 1 cup of sugar, and 36 ounces of peach soda to create a an almost-sorbet-like, almost-fizzy, very peachy ice cream.  (In case you’re wondering, puree the first three ingredients until the peaches are in very small pieces, mix in the soda, and let the ice cream maker do the rest.)  It was quick and simple and delicious, the perfect thing for a warm July evening and, hopefully, the perfect solution to a cooking slump.

But even if it didn’t solve my slump… I have ice cream.