pickles and ice cream

No, I am not pregnant.

Today we will be making both of those things here at the farm. The ice cream will be thanks to an ice cream maker on loan from a good friend who is between houses and said I could try it out while they're waiting to move into their new home. I've thought about getting one before, so this was a good way to try it out. Yesterday I cooked the milk, eggs and sugar, then cooled it and added cream and vanilla. It tastes SO good and I'm sure will be very low fat. Ahem. It had to chill overnight, so this morning the girls are very excited to get that going.

Pickles will be the bread & butter sweet pickles from the cucumbers that are taking over their little spot in the garden. Love them. I was up early this morning, chopping cukes, peppers and onions and once they're done sitting in brine for a few hours, into the pickling and jars they will go.

Yesterday I was making sure I had all the spices, and sniffed the tumeric. And for some reason my mind went right back to a visit I once paid to a farmhouse in rural Nova Scotia. I only remember bits of it - a bright, airy kitchen, a spool bed in an upstairs bedroom, a parlor that seemed very dark after the kitchen but seemed very elegant to my ten-year-old self, a front porch with a bush whose seed pods would burst open with a "snap" and send seeds rattling onto the wooden porch floor. It was owned by an older lady and her sister and our family was visiting for the day. The village (village or hamlet, for I think it could have been nothing larger) had a general store to which we were sent to get butter, with the direction to tell the store owner whom it was for, and he'd add it to their account. It was a throwback to a simpler time. I remember thinking the pace was very slow, but now I think I would greatly enjoy a day spent like that. Funny, how memory works. And it begs the question: why tumeric??