Chocolate Apprentice

Summer Savours

I am having one of those sense memory experiences.

They seem to happen for me a great deal in summer.  It must be the warm air tickling my skin and nose hairs, and rustling up odors and sounds that hearken back to “Dayes of Olde”, as I have taken to calling my life before kids.

They range from

  • the sound of a float plane crossing a still, blue sky
  • the rustling of deciduous leaves in the afternoon heat
  • the musky odor of forest dirt, stirred up by a sneaker on a path
  • the blast of cruise ship whistles in the harbor (we have a lot of ‘em here in the summer) [Read more…]

Perfect Chocolate Ice Cream

Now that the weather is finally taking a turn for the hotter, it seems an ideal time to haul out my faithful Cuisineart tabletop ice cream maker.

Okay, who am I trying to kid?

I make ice cream all year ‘round, the same way my partner barbeques everything, including Christmas dinner.  In all honesty, it is more a matter of lifting the ice-cream maker down from the shelf, and digging the chiller sleeve from the depths of the freezer.

[Read more…]

Saucy Chocolate

I still remember my first taste of Hot Fudge Sauce.  It was in a Tin Roof Sundae at Farrell’s Ice Cream Parlour, in the Lougheed Mall – the same mall where my mother sold shoes at the Hudson’s Bay Company.

I had never tasted anything so rich and exotic.  It was a warm sauce on cold ice cream!  And salty red skinned peanuts to top it all off!

After that first taste, it became a weekly ritual for me to go with my Dad to pick my Mum up from work on Friday nights, at 9pm.  [Read more…]