Vanilla Moose Track Ice Cream

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Moose Track Ice Cream with Brownies & Banana Chips

I love Moose Track ice cream.  I think I first fell in love with Moose Track ice cream when I was waiting in line for something cold and refreshing after a strenuous hike of all of 2 hours in the hot August sun.  I saw someone with a deliciously enticing cone in front of me, vanilla base swirled with fudge and studded with peanut butter cups.  It looked so inviting that I asked what flavor it was and then decided that I had to try some myself.  So I ordered a 2 scoop cup, savored every taste, and went back in the long line for another 2 scoop cup!
I wanted to try to make some.  With banana chips.  And brownies (recipe here).  Yes, I later picked the walnuts off.

Recipe
Vanilla Moose Track Ice Cream
1/2 cup light brown sugar
1 cup turbinado sugar
1 1/2 cups whole or 2% milk
3 cups cream
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 large egg yolks
1 cup chopped peanut butter cups
5 oz fudge
1 walnut brownie, chopped in small pieces, recipe here

Place sugar, milk, and cream into a bowl and mix.  Cook over medium heat until sugar dissolves and bubbles form around the side.  Stir in vanilla essence.

In a separate bowl whisk the eggs and add them to the milk mixture.

Continue cooking the milk mixture until it becomes thick and custard-like.

Cover with a plastic wrap and let cool overnight in the refrigerator.

Transfer the mixture to a ice cream maker bowl and churn for about 30 minutes.   When you have about 5 minutes left, add in the chopped fudge and then fold in the peanut butter cups.  Then freeze.
When ready to eat, sprinkle the chopped brownie pieces and banana chips
Enjoy!  Nothing is better on a hot summer day than lounging around eating ice cream!!!

The Individual Mandate: An Example of the Importance of Framing the Debate

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Most of the objections to the "individual mandate" provision of the Affordable Care Act has been cast in libertarian terms.  Its critics frequently invoke somewhat Romantic notions of "individual freedom" and "liberty" as means of rallying their troops.  What these critics fail to recognize, however, is that the problems sought to be solved by the Affordable Care Act is a collective action problem that spills over state borders.  Indeed, the problems of free riding and adverse selection are not confined to any one state alone; indeed, as states offer versions of healthcare that differ in generosity, people from less generous states can and may move to other states to benefit from more favorable healthcare provisions.  Therefore, the healthcare question should not be framed as whether the Commerce Clause may reach "inaction" or should strictly be confined to "action."  Indeed, the healthcare question should be framed as whether the government may be empowered to act in instances of market failures that span across state lines.  The answer is surely yes, since the problems that the Affordable Care Act seeks to address are economic in nature, and they do cross state lines.  As such, they should be covered by the Commerce Act.

This little example illustrates the importance of framing a debate.  The supporters of the Affordable Care Act ignore the federalism dimension to the healthcare problem to their detriment, and focus too narrowly on the libertarian arguments that draw deeply on people's emotional and visceral reaction to anything that smacks of a deprivation of their freedom.  Perhaps this example also shows how libertarian arguments have hijacked most of our debates that concern economic matters, and how perhaps we need to invoke other notions -- such as individual obligations in a well functioning and just society -- to pave the basis for a richer conversation.
This may be a bit invidious, but much of the libertarian arguments that rests of some version of substantive due process -- contractual rights equals freedom -- actually privileges the freedoms of some people over the freedoms of others.  This runs against the vein of utilitarianism, on which many libertarians purport to cite as foundations for their beliefs, which presupposes the equality of all.
Okay, I promise the next post will involve food.

The Importance of Moving in the Public Discourse

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I think people often ignore (or forget) how important it is to try to get ideas into the public discourse.  We have seen the power of ideas once they are embedded in the public conscience: for example, while nobody seemed much bothered by growing inequality, the Occupy Movement worked it into the public discourse and for a while we had staunchly conservative politicians paying attention to it.  Indeed, ideas, or the language with which we use to discuss social issues, can change the entire paradigm according to which we evaluate those issues.
Take climate change for example.  Much of the discussion on policies affecting the climate (or the environment) focuses on cost-benefit analysis.  For instance, commentators frequently talk about imposing pollution costs on coal-based technologies so that coal generated electricity reflects its "true" value as opposed to "subsidized" cost.  Such discourse is essentially economic in nature.  The premise is that as rational beings, humans behave to maximize individual well-being.  Hence the difficulty in enacting some kind of policy that extracts costs today and locally while providing benefits that are at best diffuse and potentially far into the future.  This framing of the environmental debate ignores the power of normative narratives -- in short, it ignores that a person also embraces a normative narrative of himself or herself that encodes his or her values and beliefs.  For example, although people like to reduce altruistic behavior to some probabilistic analysis of the likely future (and perhaps intangible) benefits of such behavior, a person is partially motivated to act in certain way by his or her preferences and beliefs about himself or herself as a person.
This is where raising certain ideas and normative goals into the national conscience comes into play.  Perhaps we should borrow a page from other disciplines that ask us to set ideals and goals for ourselves.  The Romantics viewed nature as a force that remains at the same time awe-inspiring (think sublimity and the terror that it inspires), while other movements regarded nature as a goal in itself, whose preservation should be aspired to without any regard for utilitarian arguments.  Regardless of the merits of such rationales, I think a good way to try to change the way environmental discourse is mediated is by trying to bring ideas into the language concerning environmental issues.  Once we do that, we can move away from the purely economic way of talking about environmental issues, which can camouflage the issue as one whose harms are potentially abstract while whose costs are immediately concrete.

Walnut Brownies

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Walnut Brownies

Brownies.  I haven't met anyone who doesn't like brownies.  Of course, people like different brownies; some like them fudge-y and gooey while others like them cake-y.  Some like them studded with nuts while others like them packed with chocolate chips.  Some even like peanut butter or cream cheese swirls in them.  I just like them plain, packed with chocolate chips, and without nuts.  I like them fudge-y too.
So you might ask why these brownies have nuts on them?  Well, I don't make brownies for me, only for others.  You see, I like brownies so much that I wouldn't want to ruin a perfectly nice recipe by substituting oil for butter (I don't like the taste of butter).  Once I tried and I had brownies coming out of the oven with the oil bubbling away -- a decidedly strange sight to behold.  Fortunately the brownie "absorbed" the oil a bit later on, but I never forgot the initial appearance.
Since as these were not for me, I baked them with nuts.

So Many Nuts!

They were well received.  Fudge-y and goo-ey, and the nuts really lent a nice flavor.

Recipe from Epicurious
Walnut Fudge Brownies
10 oz of semi-sweet chocolate, chopped
3/4 cup unsalted butter
2 oz unsweetened chocolate, chopped
2 cups sugar
4 large eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup all purpose flour
2 cups chopped walnuts
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 F.  Spray a 9x9 brownie pan with oil.  Stir 7 oz of semi-sweet chocolate with butter and unsweetened chocolate in a pan over low heat until smooth.  Remove from heat.  Whisk together sugar, eggs, vanilla, and salt in a large bowl until fluffy.  Stir in chocolate mixture.  Mix in flour and chips.  Pour into the pan and sprinkle walnuts on top.  Bake for about 35 minutes or until a tester comes out smooth.
Enjoy!

Three Pine Mysteries and Mixed Nuts

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Fruits & Nut Mix

Have you read Louise Penny's Three Pines series?  They are mystery novels interwoven with delicious details of gourmet fare.  Seriously, DO. GO. READ. THEM. if you like good food and good mysteries.  Anyway, I decided to mix up fruits and nuts partly because I was inspired by the cuisine featured in those books, and since I was too lazy to whip up any French Toast with Maple Syrup or Rack of Lamb with Beans and Fingerling Potatoes myself, mixed nuts were the easiest way to go!

The books take place in the Eastern Townships, on the border with Vermont.  I've never been there, but the books make them seem very bucolic and peaceful.  The place must be stunning in the fall, with all the vibrant red from all the maple trees.  If anyone has ever been and can recommend where/when to go and what to do, that would be great!

Now there's nothing better than indulging on summer fruits!  I certainly have my share of indulgences ....  Did I tell you that one day I ate 4 apricots?  And they were large ones, like the ones below.

Apricot & Peaches

Plus a bowl of chocolate covered fruits.  I could't quite figure out what the dried fruits were ... perhaps plums?  Or some sort of large berries?  Regardless, they were delicious.  I think they infused the chocolate with some type of liquor to lend it a deeper richer taste, smoother texture too.

Chocolate Covered Mystery Fruit

More regular fruits.  The weather has been inching towards the triple digits ... all appetites have fallen by the wayside ....

More Sone Fruits

I love stone fruits!  Though the peaches this season leave something to be desired, and the apricots are practically tasteless despite their nice coloring ....

Blueberry Cornbread

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Blueberry Cornbread

Happy 4th of July!  Barbecues and fireworks!  Picnics too!  And hence cornbreads!  I don't usually have a hankering for bread (or for starchy things in general), but I do love cornbread.
We seem to always make cornbread for July 4.  They are fluffy and just slightly sweet.  The buttermilk really gave it a nice tangy flavor.  Perfect for going on a picnic or bringing a couple of squares while waiting for the fireworks.  And they are so easy to make as well; just mix everything together by hand and bake and voila!  You have delicious cornbread to last you.  I always add blueberries at this time because they are in season and are very sweet.  The key to adding berries is that you absolutely need sweet berries.  We've added blueberries when they were not in season, and the result was not ideal, and that's a nice way of putting it.

Recipe
Blueberry Cornbread
1/4 Cup Canola Oil
1 1/2 Cups Cornmeal
1 Cup Flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
2 TBSP sugar
1 1/2 Cups Buttermilk
1 Cup blueberries, or more if desired

1.  Preheat oven to 400 F.
2.  Combine the dry ingredients.  Mix the eggs and oil into the buttermilk, then mix this into the dry ingredients.  Fold blueberries into the mixture.
3.  Pour into a pan and then bake for about 30 minutes or until the top is slightly brown.
Enjoy!

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Homemade Chocolate Moose Track Ice Cream with "Accoutrements" 

Another ice cream creation!  Moose track this time, plus accoutrements of course.  M&Ms and banana chips!

Moose track ice cream has always been a favorite flavor of mine.  I remember once after a strenuous hike up and down a hill (it was very strenuous, all up hill, no rest on the way), we stopped by the ice cream shop.  I got not one, or two, but three cups of moose track ice cream, 2 scoops in each cup.  Perhaps I was especially hungry that day, or perhaps the ice cream was particularly good, but it doesn't matter.  I like moose track.  I was hungry.  I needed to replenish all the lost calories ....

Plain Chocolate Moose Track Ice Cream

Or, you can have it plain.

Recipe
Chocolate Moose Track Ice Cream
12 oz semi-sweet chocolate, roughly chopped
1 1/2 cup 2% or whole milk
3 cup heavy cream
1 1/2 cup turbinado sugar
pinch of salt
1 cup mini-peanut butter cups
4 oz fudge, chopped
2/3 cup cocoa powder
2 tsp vanilla extract

Mix together cocoa powder, sugar, milk, and cream until the sugar has fully dissolved.  Add in vanilla extract and stir and combine.  Cover the mixture with clear wrap and place in the refrigerator overnight.

Transfer the mixture into ice cream bowl maker and churn for 30 minutes.  Shortly before the churning is over, add in the chopped chocolate fudge and chocolate pieces.  Then place ice cream into tub and freeze.

Enjoy!