smitten kitchen

You know what? I’m having a fantastic summer. Life is incredibly sweet, juicy opportunities for personal and professional development are cropping up left and right, we’re going to Napa in one month and — I’m thrilled.

Its terrible how little I like to talk about this, how fearful even the most level-headed of us can be of jinxing out all the good in the world by bringing it up. I mean, really. There is a difference between flaunting or bragging about a good life and celebrating it, or at least there ought to be. Did I tell you Alex and I had a little paper airplane flying contest before we went to bed two nights ago? Yeah, things are that kind of fun.

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Like ten zillion other brides with mile-long registries, I received an ice-cream maker as a wedding shower gift two years ago, but when I finally busted it out last summer, I ended up really struggling to find good recipes. Why so much sugar in a cantaloupe sorbet? Isn’t it already sweet enough? Why should I add an equal part of water to watermelon puree? It’s a weak flavor to begin with, why dilute it so? Why do so many frozen yogurt recipes call for oddities like gelatin and milk? Can’t you just freeze yogurt? These questions nagged at me as I tried recipe after recipe, and save for a single strawberry sorbet that I still dream of late at night, each final product disappointed me in the exact ways that I predicted it would.

Yet, being a newbie in the world of homemade frozen things, I lacked the confidence to go out on my own, which is why when my new best friend (shh, I haven’t told him yet) announced that his newest cookbook would be aptly titled “The Perfect Scoop” I just knew that it would have the guidance that I needed. By some obvious, glaring oversight on the purchasing department of my Chelsea Barnes and Noble had the nerve to not stock it, and in the two weeks between the time I ordered and received the book, my torture was increased tenfold by having to view countless other examples of the awesomeness of this cookbook.

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