The Uhl Family: June 2011

I've got to get better at regularly posting here! Maybe that will be a goal for this summer...

Speaking of summer--it's here! Finally! Not only have we had a stretch of great weather, but Anderson is officially finished with school. It blows my mind that I now have a 2nd grader. I feel like we are miles away from the baby and toddler days, but he still cracks me up daily and is one of the cutest kids on the planet!

*Anderson with Mrs. Graham who finished the year for Mrs. Neimeister when she had her baby. That's right--Anderson had three first grade teachers this year. He started off with Mrs. Smith when we lived in WP*

Now that's he's older and past the nap stage--naps took up a good chunk of the day--I'm trying to find some fun activities, crafts, projects and outings to fill up our summer. We have a LOT of things planned on the weekends, but since Anderson didn't want to do any camps this summer our weekdays are wide open.

One idea that I had was to involve him as much as possible with planning and preparing dinner each night. At the very least maybe my future daughter-in-law will appreciate that he knows his way around the kitchen, but I also hope that this will be a time for us to connect and have fun in the kitchen. He's old enough now that he can chop and stir things on the stove with supervision, and he's always been a good helper when I bake. So far we are both enjoying it. I think he likes being involved in choosing what we have for dinner, and he likes the independence of being in charge of certain steps during the cooking process. I like the company in the kitchen, and I like teaching him how to cook. And we both love the reaction from David when he sits down to a meal that we both made for him. (I also love that David cleans up the kitchen afterward!)

This isn't exactly cooking dinner, but today we decided to make an after-dinner treat. We all love ice cream in the summer, but it can get pricey if we go to the ice cream parlor more than once a week. Since we are a one income family with a TON of summer travel plans, we do need to watch what we're spending on non-necessity items. Making homemade ice cream sandwiches seemed like it would be fun to do, a great treat for dessert, and I already had most of the ingredients in my pantry/fridge so it was very low cost.

First, we made the ice cream. I did have to run to the store to buy the cream, but other than that we had everything we needed including that ice cream machine. David and I got this ice cream maker years ago, and boy does it make some yummy ice cream! For the ice cream sandwiches we were going to make plain vanilla, but we decided to add in chocolate chips too. Chocolate makes everything better, don't you think?

Vanilla Ice Cream
1 cup milk, well chilled
2 cups heavy cream, well chilled
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1-2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract to taste
chocolate chips--optional

We mixed the milk, cream, sugar, and vanilla in a bowl, then we poured it into the ice cream maker. It churns and freezes it (takes about a half hour). We then put it into a bowl for the freezer.

Then we made the cookies. We just used the basic Toll House recipe. We made them slightly bigger than I would normally make them so they'd be a good size for ice cream sandwiches. I tried to make them all about the same size, but...some ended up bigger than others. Oh well!