Some new activity

This weekend Wally and Paula are in Albuquerque. Friday I had dinner with them; somehow the idea of candied garlic came up. When something ridiculous like that is mentioned, it’s hard for me to bypass giving it a try. So tonight I whipped up a batch. Wally will be giving it a taste tomorrow during breakfast.

I also made a new bet today. The bet is over the differentiation of dog vs. human snacks; I will select six different snacks (3 human, 3 dog); my opponent must correctly identify which snack goes with each species based on appearance and smell (although I wouldn’t complain if taste became involved also). The wager is lunch.

Another activity: making lime sorbet today. I had forgotten to put the ice cream maker insert into the freezer last night, so I tried mixing crushed dry ice into the sorbet liquid. The verdict: it worked OK, rapidly freezing the sorbet (although I had to finish it off in the freezer). A key factor seems to be the amount of dry ice, as well as the fineness of the crush (you don’t need too much, and it should be as powdered as possible; I ended up having to lift out some large chunks of solid CO2 from the sorbet). The evaporating gas seems to fluff up the sorbet nicely. But don’t forget that dry ice is extremely cold, and if the sorbet is completely frozen by the dry ice, you need to let it warm up a bit so you don’t burn yourself.