vanilla

My friend sent me some vanilla beans from Hawaii. What better way to showcase than to make some vanilla ice cream.

vanilla ice cream with chocolate chip cookies
This may have been a little too creamy. I know, is there really such thing? But the mouthfeel was a little too rich, like it coated your mouth with a film. It was a 2/1 ratio of cream to milk, so maybe next time I'll do half and half. I had some chocolate chip cookie dough in the freezer, so I baked some up to eat with the ice cream. Very yummy!
[ice cream: cream, milk, sugar, vanilla beans; cookies: butter, sugar, brown sugar, flour, chocolate chips, vanilla, baking powder, salt]

comfort food

A good friend of ours has been put on temporary bed rest, so we went to visit with dinner and lots of entertainment.

cassoulet
This is one of my favorite dishes to make. I use Mark Bittman's recipe from How To Cook Everything, although I suspect I use more meat than I really should.
[white beans, lamb shoulder, sausage, pork shoulder, bacon, tomatoes, thyme, garlic, bread crumbs olive oil, salt, pepper]

chocolate caramel sandwich cookies
Another recipe from Food & Wine. I'm surprised I managed to pull these off, since I'm not normally very precise. They were really good, not that hard, although very time consuming. I was really nervous about the caramel, and kept worrying that it was taking too long. The caramel was wonderfully soft the first two days, and the started to crystallize. Does anyone have any tips on how to keep it soft and chewy for longer?
[cookies: butter, sugar, flour, cocoa powder; caramel: sugar, honey, corn syrup, heavy cream]