summertime...and the marmot is TGIF'in!!

I thought after yesterday, my motivation to do work, at work, could sink no lower. I assumed I would get more done today, because I couldn’t possibly be even lazier and more distracted and staring-off-into-space than I was yesterday.

I was wrong.

I popped up delightedly when I realized it’s payday and I have to pass out paystubs, taking me away from my desk and the possibility of working on the long, boring, not complex task which I could bang out in three hours but which I will instead drag out over four days. I then spent twenty minutes upstairs shooting the sh** with a coworker about the Norwalk virus and basal cell skin cancer. Then when I got back to my desk, my boss (who sits directly behind my desk and can see my monitor) left to work at home for a few hours.

Even lower.

Here’s what I would *like* to do today:

Grocery shopping
Cook
Clean my house
Take a walk in the sunshine
Take a nap (can’t sleep well when it’s hot! I’m exhausted!)
Go running
Take a yoga class

I’m telling you, I could get SO much done if I didn’t work full-time!

Now, it’s no secret that the Marmot is 27 and a half and her biological clock is ticking. Louder. And louder. I was thinking in the shower today that if I were a full-time mom, I could spend the day at the zoo with my kid(s.) We could look at the animals, have an ice cream cone, enjoy the sun. It would be nice. Now, you may well be thinking: “Yeah, but Marmot, you’d also have to potentially: change nasty poopy diapers, deal with crying hissy fits when you don’t buy your kid the gorilla toy, clean up spilled food, wipe ice cream off your bosoms smeared there by your kid, keep the kid from eating stuff on the ground…” I know all this. But I’m pretty sure it would be worth it. Especially if the kid has my sense of humor and MSH’s eyelashes.

Now, other days I think I’d really like to work, at least part-time, when we have kids. And the financial situation may dictate that to a certain extent. But fellow mammals? This is not one of those days. I guess I’m just not over the whole “summer vacation” tip. I definitely enjoy the “no homework” tip that comes with being part of the Working World. But summer? Yeah. I was thinking yesterday that because I have French descendants, some sort of alarm is going off deep in my being. Right now, the whole nation of France is at the beach. As you may know, the French (in general, if they’re not self-employed—but usually even if they are!) take six weeks of paid vacation every year, by law. And the majority of people there take it from mid-July through the end of August. (They don’t need to use any of it the rest of the year, because there are holidays ALL the time. For example, when I was going to school there in May, there were more holidays that month (no school and for many, no work) than there were work days. Seriously.) Sounds nice. Think about it. Six. Frigging. Weeks. Can you imagine how relaxed you’d be? I think most Americans are scared to be that relaxed. I know my boss is. I’ll tell you right now, I haven’t been that relaxed since I was a child and had SUMMER VACATION!!

I actually did a bunch of cooking last night. Made a DELICIOUS soup, from one of my fave cookbooks. I am wondering about the intellectual property implications of putting it on my blog so YOU TOO can enjoy a tasty chilled soup perfect for a light lunch or a refreshing first course. So if you have an opinion on that legal matter, citizens, please let me know. In the meantime, email me if yer interested. Cuz this is one damn fine soup. (I would really like to put some in dry ice and send to my friends in New York City. It’s really hot and disgusting there right now. Mink, I’m sending you virtual chilled soup!)

But I also made some ice cream in my ice cream maker. I have a cookbook called “Forever Summer” by Nigella Lawson (a Brit) with lots of ice cream recipes. I’ve made one recipe, raspberry ripple, a few times, and I’ve gotten pretty good at it, with a tasty custard base you cook first. But I wanted to try making strawberry, MSH’s favorite. This same book has a recipe specifically for strawberry and it’s totally unlike raspberry ripple recipe. It’s way more complicated (buy a vanilla bean, and let it INFUSE into the custard, rather than using vanilla extract,) and uses heavy cream instead of “light cream,” which I interpret into American as half and half, and TEN egg yolks instead of six. Now, the custard you make for the raspberry ripple is pretty freakin’ rich. I don’t think you need four more egg yolks (besides, that’s more expensive!) and I don’t need the extra complications, so I went ahead and made the raspberry ripple custard base and poured it into the ice cream maker. But then after it was almost frozen and I was processing the strawberries, I realized you’re supposed to put the strawberry puree into the custard BEFORE you put it in the ice cream maker. Oops. Undaunted! I layered the finished batch of custard ice cream* into a Tupperware with swizzles of chocolate syrup and put it into the freezer to freeze fully. Chocolate Ripple Custard. Ta da! Then I made another custard and put the vanilla in this time and put it in the fridge, as I did the strawberry puree, so tonight (once the ice cream maker's freezer bowl is again at its frozen peak) I can make the strawberry stuff. And will it taste delicious? Odds are, yes it will. And you can just puree the strawberries, while with raspberries, you have to push the puree through a sieve or cheesecloth to get out the seeds.

I like Nigella Lawson, but what is she trying to pull? Maybe you’re just supposed to try out several recipes for the ice cream base and then use your favorite as a base for other recipes. She also tends to be rather blasé about cooking temperatures and things like that. “Heat” that and “cook til a velvety custard” and she never tells you high heat, medium heat, whatever, and she doesn’t tell you how to know when it’s a custard! I called my grandma the first time and she looked up something about it clinging to a metal spoon, so that’s what I go by.

By the way, you can also make ice cream by just mixing together milk/cream, sugar, and flavoring and running it in the ice cream maker but I made a batch that way at the same time as raspberry ripple and brought it to a barbecue and put them on ice, and the raspberry ripple stayed pretty much ice cream, and the other stuff turned into soup. So I think the custard method gives it more structure somehow.

One more thing: this chica in the office downstairs was in Peru for three weeks, and asked me to bring in her mail while she was gone, and I did. To say thank you, she brought me a big bar of Bolivian chocolate. (She popped into Bolivia at Lake Titicaca.) I have not eaten any yet, because I don't want to have a sugar crash, but I can't wait til lunch. I broke off a piece for my boss so now I can smell it. Smelly good. I've been sniffing my oh-so-ripe peach as well. Mmmm.

I’ll bet you’re tired of reading, and glad my boss is usually around to keep my entries short!* Have yourself a heppy Friday and a heppy HEPPY weekEnd!

*I’d also forgotten the vanilla extract. But you know what? It still tastes like heaven! MSH had a wee bowl with strawberries on top.

**Imagine, one friend, when I told her I had a blog, couldn't imagine what I write about. Hmm.