Good-Times-at-Home Edition

Fresh pineapple ice cream! It's a magical food! Among all the flavors I've tried out in the new machine, this one is everybody's favorite, made even more satisfactory (to me) because I figured out the recipe myself.

Fresh Pineapple Ice Cream 

Cut a fresh pineapple into chunks, removing the rind, all of the core, and as many eyes and tough bits as possible. Puree in a food processor; then press through a fine mesh into the bowl of an electric mixer. (Straining is important for getting rid of any remaining fibers.) You'll have roughly 2 cups of puree. 

Add 1 cup of superfine sugar and blend for about 2 minutes until the sugar has dissolved. 

Mix in 2 cups of heavy cream and a tablespoon of rum. 

Freeze in your ice cream maker according to machine instructions. 

The resulting pale-yellow confection will resemble frosting in texture.

Yesterday was so summery, and pineapple ice cream fit right in. I opened windows, wore sandals all day, remembered that the air conditioner in my car is broken (sigh), and did not even consider starting a fire in the wood stove. Today will be even warmer--into the 80s!--but then we'll drop back into Maine Climate for the weekend. That's fine: it will be easier to move the rest of that compost in cooler weather, though my tomato seedlings would prefer the heat.

The maple leaves are mostly out now; tulips are fading but lilacs are opening. I'm harvesting elegant little radishes, baby spinach, and arugula. Chives are budding; creeping thyme is flowering among the stones.

I am slowly drafting a new poem, titled "Preface to Paradise Lost." A chunk of unemployment money just showed up in my account, and Tom is making jokes about spending it on cocaine and a used party barge. In Scrabble news, I beat Paul by a hair, and then we played around the with the words on the board to invent new commercial ventures. The best was Us-Tux: two-person formal attire . . . the prom version of a tandem bicycle. We laughed so hard at our own jokes that we very nearly choked to death on the pineapple ice cream.