A Suburban Adventure

This one's totally unrelated to food....

Given my four day weekend, I was itching for some kind of adventure, there were enough days to lay around and enjoy being off work, but if I had too much time I knew I would either bake (and we already have four tupperwares filled with oatmeal cookies, chocolate chip cookies, chocolate peanut butter chip cookies, and brownies, plus the pudding ice cream), or organize and re-organize the apartment.

We had been throwing around the idea of going to Target for weeks now, and brought it up again while at brunch with our friends on Saturday. they only offered us many words of encouragement, "you should totally rent a car" and "Target!?! yes!" (I may be paraphrasing, but that's pretty close). Jeff looked for cars for Saturday afternoon (at 12:30 on Saturday), but unsurprisingly, none were available. so we kind of dropped it, said we'd look again, but forgot by the time we got home.

Sunday morning I got a reminder email from one of my friends, so Jeff looked online again. there was ONE car available in the whole city and the only time it was available was from 2 - 6 pm. PERFECT. and it was a MINI COOPER! I immediately asked if it were a convertible, sadly no, but the sunroof was essentially the whole top of the car.

one afternoon trip to target in a mini coming up!

next came me AGONIZING over which target to go to. there are several in NJ, one in Queens and then bunches out further in Long Island. I had been to one in LI with a friend awhile back and it was fantastic, so I wanted to go there to make sure we had a good target experience, but it was a 45 minute drive, and we didn't want to have to rush at target if there was traffic. see the thing is, you want the target to be far enough outside the city so that its the suburbs (and you get the full suburban target experience) but not too far that it takes forever to get there. a fine line, a very fine line. so we decided on one in NJ.

there was a little apprehension over the size of the trunk, given that we were going to target and all, and the whole point is to buy everything, but I heard that the trunk is really bigger than you think it is, and with a leap of faith we piled into the car (three of us total).

rarin' to go, Jeff turns the key in the ignition, nothing. but all the lights go on in the car. it doesn't turn over, it doesn't try to turn over, but the air comes on, all the lights go on, everything except the engine. so it's not the battery, it seemed as though it was disengaged. could our target hopes come crashing down? I hoped not. Jeff was sure we were "being stupid" but got out and asked the parking attendant, who gently reminded Jeff he had to swipe his zip car card on the inside of the car to engage it. oh RIGHT! (actually, I had no idea you had to do this, but now we'll never forget). with only a few minutes lost, we set out for the suburbs.

we head out for the open highway (well, the very traffic-y west side highway) and headed to the tunnel. Also happening this weekend is Fleet Week in which Navy ships come into the piers in mid-town and you can check them out and there are sailors and such wandering around. anyway, the ships are close to the tunnel, so there's lots of people and LOTS of policemen.

having not often driven out of the city, we didn't exactly know the route, and we fell back into our normal routine where Jeff drives fast and I can't tell him where to go and then I yell that he did the wrong thing. aah, the suburbs. anyway, he ended up in the wrong lane, "wrong" because we needed to turn left to go to the tunnel and he couldn't get into the left lane because there were orange cones set up (set up with plenty of space between them so that a car, especially a mini could go between them). I said, "go through the cones" Jeff said "I can't, and there is a police man RIGHT there" (literally 15 feet in front of us). But, Jeff does it anyway.

cop looks up, and immediately starts walking to the car. he does not look happy.
"What are you doing? You want a ticket on Memorial Day? You saw me standing there and the cones, what are you doing disrespecting my cones? You're disrespecting me and my cones. The only reason I can think you did that was because you want a ticket on Memorial Day."
he took a breath and Jeff said
"No, but I can see why you think that. I'm sorry"
and he replied
"Get out of my lane!"

we got through the light and by the cop and all three of us immediately started laughing "disrespecting my cones" - did he seriously just say that?! but I would have been in HUGE trouble if Jeff would have gotten a ticket. however, it was very clear that he wasn't giving Jeff a ticket from the beginning, because he just would have asked for license and registration. but we were through the traffic, through the cop and his cones and on our way.

when we got to our exit and got off the highway, the area seemed, well, not what I had hoped for. I became very nervous that the target would not be everything that I had been imagining. but we made it inside, and it definitely met my expectations. we filled up a cart (literally filled up to the top), and headed to the checkout. we then began to worry about fitting it all in the car (especially since Jeff insisted we buy a mop). we took the cart out and just started piling the bags in, one on top of another, we kept piling until we had two bags left, which probably could have fit in the trunk too, but we had extra space in the back, so we through them back there. the mop, of course had to slide in the back and through the front two seats. but, it was pretty amazing, I'd have to say.

we headed back into the city munching on Goldfish crackers, happy suburbanites for a couple of hours.

The Return of the Puddin' Pop

Raise your hand if you remember the frozen pudding pops. Raise your hand if you thought they were freakin' AWESOME. maybe I'm the only one with my hand in the air (or for that matter both hands in the air), but you're probably not raising your hand because you:
1. think it's silly to raise your hand while reading a blog
2. never had a pudding pop
3. don't have taste buds

Seriously people. pudding pops, or for that matter, the chocolate pudding pops, were one of the best things I remember eating when I was younger. I loved that crispy icy exterior and then the bite of the cold on your teeth, but still the soft texture as you bit into it. I used to slowly lick off all the icy exterior to get to the pudding goodness on the inside, savoring each and every lick.

So I recently re-purchased an ice cream maker (if I haven't told you the story of the first one that broke, it's a good one, but let's just say my freezer was covered in blue anti-freeze as the bowl oozed from a crack in the seam). with a new kitchen, a recent trip to Italy (and therefore a renewed obsession with gelato) and a Williams-Sonoma gift certificate, I felt it the perfect time for a new ice cream maker.

I hooked it up nearly immediately after the first bowl was frozen, and made a mediocre vanilla ice cream. I then remembered my frustration trying to make a fabulous gelato in the past, and I never quite got there without using all heavy whipping cream. I then decided to flip through the instruction manual (we were going to make margaritas, so I wanted to see if it had any hints). I stumbled upon some recipes, which all looked fairly typical until I flipped the page to "Chocolate Pudding Ice Cream." Could it be? Could it be like my cherished pudding pops? I remained very very skeptical.

Living in a "paperless" household, I threw away the manual assuming it would be online. so today I came home with my packet of instant chocolate pudding (I think it's the first time I've ever bought instant pudding) and hopped online to find the recipe. unfortunately cuisinart decided that it didn't need to post the manual online, but did have five select recipes which didn't include the pudding recipe. All I could remember was that it called for milk and a package of chocolate pudding.

so putting google to good use I searched for a chocolate pudding ice cream recipe. unfortunately I came up with junk. a lot of extra sugar, eggs, and other things that I don't remember in the original. so, I decided to wing it. I didn't know how much milk to add, but since most recipes had 3 cups of some combination of milk and cream, I just put in 3 cups of milk and mixed in the pudding package. I threw it in the ice cream maker and set it to work.

20 minutes later I ventured a taste. my school days on the playground came rushing back to me immediately. success! pudding pop ice cream! and it wasn't even done churning yet. I tried to let it go longer but I kept eating it. finally, I pried myself away and put it in the freezer for a bit, but I've already probably eaten half of the batch. it is delicious. probably not perfect, but next time I'm going to freeze it in an ice cube tray for a real pudding pop like experience. and it's still unbelievable that there were 2 ingredients. TWO!

ooh, the pudding pop goodness will definitely be an obsession of mine for the time being. I may even try another pudding flavor. I don't think it'll be as good, but I've got two freezer bowls, so I can go back-to-back rounds.

so here's the recipe. I still can't believe it. I'm in pudding pop heaven:
Chocolate Pudding Ice Cream
3 cups of milk (or any combination of milk and cream)
1 package of instant pudding

whisk the pudding into cold milk. prepare ice cream according to the manufacturers instructions on your ice cream maker.

eat pudding pops and love life a little more.