Ice Cream Puffs

Sacramento locals, have you heard of this lovely little parlor over on Fair Oaks Blvd?
No? Well let me introduce you.

Lovely warm doughnut with ICE CREAM filled center...meet Sacramento Friends.
Have you ever bitten into an ice cream doughnut before? It's wonderful. Just imagine what it's like to bite into a fresh warm doughnut—now imagine your favorite ice cream in the center. What?! Mind BLOWN. I'm salivating...wish we had something like this here. Do we foodie friends? Oh, please say yes.

This is a great little shop, featuring all kinds of yummies besides this, and don't forget $2 Tuesdays (toppings included)! This place made us all VERY happy. Click here to visit the ice cream menu.

Spheres

Christmas Eve was filled with cooking! These two cuties helped me make pomodoro sauce from scratch.

A little later we made french gnocchi, which I will NEVER do again. It entails sticky wet dough that gets piped into boiling water, then chilled on ice, dried and then baked in the oven. It was a lot of steps and messy and the texture and flavor was meh. I admit, I could have done it wrong. I probably did it wrong. I'm not french.

So what was our theme this year you ask? Spherical. Yes. Spherical. Not round, not circular, not flat. Spherical.

So we ate: frog eye salad, pea and cocktail onion salad, gnocchi, meatballs, and Brazilian cheese balls.

Next day: Christmas!

Of course Mom's stacks of fresh sourdough cinnamon rolls made their appearance alongside quiche.

Below: a few snaps of the gifting festivities.

This space-case somehow missed photographing the Boties and Adam. But here are some of the tags Adam used on my presents.

And for dinner a family favorite: Beef Daube Provençal with Grandma's french bread.

This bread is SO GOOD and easy. Aren't they beautiful? I am thinking of sharing the recipe with you all. Should I?

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Until Next Time

Hello! We're high school friends from Band and English class and we try to see each other every year. It's always a pleasure to accompany these two lovelies. We laugh and talk and they amaze me with how much is going on in their lives, how much they do, and the challenges they face. These two are strong women and they are an example to me.

Several years ago I jokingly (but seriously...but joking) blogged that if anyone wanted to be friends with me, they needed to be Sushi eaters. Megan has taken me seriously these past couple of years! Hah hah. So this year we visited Mikuni a new place in Folsom almost directly off 50 across from Palladio.

I liked MOST of the sushi dishes with the exception of one. See the one wrapped in yellow below? It tasted like...a Mexican rice/meat dish. NOT that great and a weird texture too.

This one however, was refreshing and citrusy, featuring salmon and lemon. Yum.

And you know what? Even though we've "changed" as we've gotten older—we're still the same at heart. We're still ALMOST as silly as we used to be.

I love you two!

P.S. I have an apology to make: I ordered more sushi rolls than everyone else (to share of course)...but then we split the bill and it didn't dawn on me what I had done until the next day! It's like that Friends episode where they split the bill but it wasn't fair...I'm sorry! I didn't mean to make you pay for my weird sushi choices! I owe you dessert next time we hang out, mkay?

Try Something New

This bright weirdly shaped fruit caught my eye at the grocery store. "What IS this?!" It was the strangest thing—a Buddha's Hand. Well, I can see why. I Snapped it to a few people who had the same reaction as I. A few days later I went back to buy one, because OF COURSE I had to try it. How can one not?

After reading up on it, I found that it's the oldest citron known, and it doesn't have any edible fruit inside. The rind is used for flavoring lemon dishes. Which makes sense. It smells heavenly, like a combination of orange and lemon rind plus citrus blossom. I liked rubbing my nose all over it and breathing deeply—eyes closed for maximum olfactory pleasure.

Here's what it looked like inside.

Looking for a way to preserve it, I found a recipe and candied the rind.

Then I skewered a piece on a toothpick for each person in the family to try and we all gagged! IT WAS SO BITTER! I had to rinse out my mouth. So yeah, use the rind for flavoring, don't actually eat chunks of it. I left the jar at home with Dad. I assume he's using it in hot tea? (Need to contact him and see if he's had any adventures with it.)
Isn't it fun trying new things?