Guest Post: Simple Frozen Dessert: The Semi-Freddo

Note from Ada: This week I'm asking some of my bloggy friends to help fill the Of Woods and Words soundwaves. Today, Emily, a writer and blogger over at the DIY blog The Happy Home, helps us think summer  . . . and let's be honest, here in MN these chilly May days, we need all the help we can get when it comes to thinking warm, summery thoughts!


Summer is hitting most of the US right now, so many of us are in the market for easy frozen desserts. I bought the ice cream maker attachment to my KitchenAid last year, but it definitely cost an arm and a leg. It barely fits in my kitchen, too! Sometimes, I wish I'd saved my cash, especially now that I know how to make a semi-freddo.

If you don't want to spend the money on an ice cream maker, or if you don't have the room for the big, bulky, one-purpose machine, the semi-freddo a frozen dessert that can be a lifesaver in the heat.

Essentially, it's a frozen, flavored whipped cream. It just takes a bit of of creativity and a hand mixer to make an endless series of delicious desserts.

For my latest experiment, I made a mango-strawberry semi-freddo, adapted from a recipe from A Bird In The Kitchen.

2/3 cup sugar, plus 2tbsp additional for the strawberries
2/3 cup mango juice
3 egg yolks
1 cup strawberries, chopped
1 cup heavy cream

In a small saucepan, heat the mango juice and the sugar. Boil until sugar dissolves, and a simple syrup is made. Cool to room temperature.

Place your chopped strawberries in a bowl, and cover with two tablespoons of sugar. Put aside in the fridge.

In a metal bowl, whip your egg yolks until pale and are one and a half times the size.

Slowly pour in the room-temperature syrup into the egg yolks while beating.

In a separate metal bowl, whip the heavy cream until it holds stiff peaks.

Fold the yolk mixture and strawberries into the whipped cream.

Transfer the mixture to a freezer safe mold, and freeze for 8 hours, or overnight.

To serve, either scoop, or turn out of your mold and slice!

Semi-freddos are light, airy, sweet and cold. You can swap out the fruit flavors for absolutely anything, and even add chocolate if you want to. A basic semi-freddo is the perfect recipe to keep in your summer collection!

Read more ...

When Why Blog Goes Beyond Why Not

“Of Woods and Words” was a thought long before it was a reality. In the summer of 2009, I decided saying I wanted to be a freelance writer was kind like saying I wanted to take up skydiving. It was a perfectly fine idea, but until I started to prove myself, until I started jumping out of planes, whenever I mentioned that “I’d like to write,” everyone was going to give me a slightly pained look that can allude to only two things: suspicion or bad gas.   

I read everything I could about starting out as a freelance writer that summer and everything I read seemed to allude to something magical called “a platform.”  Without a platform, we freelance writers were apparently heading up a certain creek with no paddle to be found. Not only were we writers supposed to be filling up our portfolios with clippings, we were also supposed to enter into a nearly endless barrage of promotion via Facebook, Twitter and, of course, our personal blogs.   

I thought, “I’d better get on that train!” But it always seems like a poor idea to jump on a train before you now where it’s headed exactly . . . 

I moved into the Shack (a poorly insulated 12x20 building that was once the laundry house for a resort) with Andy last fall to spend the winter separated from the nearest grocery store by 25 miles of often icy highway, while waiting tables at a nearby roadhouse-style restaurant. This wasn’t how I’d imagined my post-college life working out at all and I knew I might need an outlet just slightly larger than my living space as I balanced the economics of life with my dreams. With that “Of Woods and Words” was born and through it, I started to capture the ramblings of this rural writer.

Today’s Back to Blogging challenge asks, “why do you blog?” I don’t know that I could have told you exactly what prompted me to type out that first post last October. I knew I needed a place to ponder the perplexities of making a living writing while maintaining a rural outlook on life. Over the course of this past year, I’ve work to build a concrete answer to the “why do you blog?” question.

• I blog because if I didn’t, who knows when I’d actually get around to writing. I like to act all focused and with it, but in reality, I’m a big slug of a writer who has to deluded herself with real and often arbitrary deadlines to get anything on the page.
• I blog to better understand what’s eating at me. I’ve journaled since my tween years, but during college I’d moved away from keeping a handwritten diary. I found I missed the process of writing a rant (like in “You Know I Don’t Speak Spanish”) to sort through a particular issue. The blog offers a slightly more focused forum for problem solving.
• I blog to reason through my experiences as a person who writes, who tries to live locally, who lives in the woods.
• More than anything, I blog to keep connected blogging connects me with a larger world around me. I learn much from the experience of being a member of the blogging world: about myself, others, and technology. 

Still not sure where the train's going. But I hope you'll stay with me to find out. 

Read more ...

Women Who Inspire

We writers are supposed to know a thing about inspiration. Yet when faced with today’s Back to Blogging challenge, “write about a women who inspires you” I came up a little befuddled. Let’s face it, writing prompts and I have never been great friends.

I thought about all the women who inspire me: my mom, grandmothers, co-workers, friends, even authors I’ve never met.  For a while I planned to center this post around writers Anne Lamott and Madeleine L’Engle who were both influential in prompting me to trust my pen and lead the life I do.

But a few things happened before I got around to writing that post. For one thing, I had a couple days off. The days off lead to a trip to Duluth, which lead to looking at woodstoves, which lead to a second trip to Duluth to purchase and transport a wood stove home. Before I knew it, it was time to go back to work and I had an article deadline staring me smack-dab in the face. And instead of writing this blog post in the morning like I’d planned, I worked on my deadline this morning and spent the whole day alternating between being mad at my deadline and being mad at myself for procrastinating.  Now I’m writing this post at 8:15 in the evening, after finishing up the drafts of my deadline stuff. Supper might be a good idea. . . .    

While I cursed my poor planning, railed against having to devote my evening to writing articles when I’d rather be doing so many other things, I took a minute to look at the article I was working on. The article profiles the work of our local domestic and sexual violence prevention center.

And I thought to myself, “Listen lady. Wake up and smell the roses. Stop looking for inspiration and open your eyes.”

So I blinked and looked back at my computer screen. In the article I was talking about

women who in the worst of conditions have the courage to tell their stories, to “change their stars.” And volunteers who devote their spare time to being trained and putting in on-call hours so they can help others overcome the affects of violence. These women are so much braver than I’ve ever been and most of the time we don’t even acknowledge that violence is a reality in every one of our communities.

If there isn’t inspiration in the stories of violence survivors, of people like S.A.R.K, of violence center volunteers, then I don’t know what inspiration is. They’re the people who actually wrestle again the hugeness of it all, who trust in change and healing even in the worst of situations. That’s something very few of us do.

Tonight I thought, maybe inspiration isn’t something about realization. It isn’t something that strikes from the heavens. Instead, it’s a re-remembering of something you always knew.

Read more ...

Back to Blogging: Title Repost

Midway through the Back to Blogging challenge. Day Three?  To repost a blog post with a title you especially liked. Searching through the archives, I found a lot of uninspired blog post titles. But I did find one I thought was clever, so below you'll find the post from July 8, 2010: 

Money Can't By You . . .  Health Care? 
Yesterday, my first errand set me behind schedule. I spent the rest of the day running late until finally after supper, Andy proposed we go lake trout fishing. As I sat in the bobbing boat, it felt like the first time I’d sat still all day.

I had a moment as I was driving home last night. I was halfway home and still had one last errand to run. This after a day of laundry, grocery shopping, recording a commentary, finishing up a documentary, and making two batches of blueberry jam among other sundry errands. And it was my day off.

“Why am I doing this?” I thought to myself. Don’t get me wrong, I really like what I do and it’s my resistance to let go of any of my tasks that leads to my days off wearing me out more than my work days. As of late, I also get compensated fairly well for my efforts and after a pretty pauper-ish winter, that feels pretty good. But is it worth it? At the end of the day do the numbers in my online bank statement justify the bags beneath my eyes?

Conventional wisdom is that if you work your butt off when you’re younger so that you can reap the benefits in your old age. But since retirement seems to be going the way of the American Dream, one has to wonder: what if it’s always like this?

When I was researching an end of life article a few months back, I spoke with a health care provider who said, “You can do whatever you want at the end of your life, as long as you can pay for it.” Okay, I’m picking up what you’re putting down, but really are our lives spelled out in such crude monetary terms?

I’ve yet to reconcile myself with the fact that my gross annual income plunks me right in the midst of the middle class and prevents me from getting any possible break on my health insurance. What? I’m not still just a poor college student? It’s just no fun watching big bits of your paycheck whoosh away towards a health care plan you can’t really afford to use. No fun, but a cultural sucker punch I’m willing to deal with because I’m not willing to have a medical emergency bankrupt me.

I kept driving and kept thinking and I realized the running around happens for a few reasons. First of all, there are bills to pay. Of course, if I made a little less money, it seems I’d have access to better health care options. But that’s just not worth it, not when comes the biggie: many, many, many years from now, I don’t want to die in some miserable, icky nursing home because it was all I could afford. Oh I know, things change, fiscal security comes and goes, but when I deeply wonder what the heck I’m doing this all for, all I have to do is imagine some really awful nursing home. There will come a day when the running around ceases and when that day comes, I want to be darn sure that I get to spend it in a place with a nice garden.

So I run around. Partly because of the imaginary icky nursing home. But mostly, because I wouldn’t want to not do anything of the things I’m doing this summer.

I like this blog title because it merges something familiar with what I hoped was something thought provoking. Of course the post just went on to be a rant about how hard it is to be a twenty-something dealing with the American Dream, but really ,what did you expect? ;) 

Read more ...

Back to Blogging: Post Revist

Today's blogging challenge is to revisit an important blog spot you wished had been paid more attention. I searched through the archives and stumbled upon this one. Why was it important? Well, it summed up pretty much all the neuroses which fuel this twenty-something's blog. This was posted on January 5, 2010: 

Where is the Romance? 

A few years ago, the Black-Eyed Peas asked: “Where’s the love?” Today I ask, “Where’s the romance?”

It is a fact universally accepted by man that the older you get, the more the rosy tint on your glasses fades. We start out as English majors with minors in theatre and French and end up double majors in English and Communication for practicality sakes. The American Dream becomes an accepted bit of mythology. And there are always more dirty dishes.

Things are pretty darn good with Andy and I. The Shack is a cozy happy place. We share the grocery bill and we’re both thinking in “long haul” terms. So when I was at home yesterday, I asked my family what the point was of getting married. “Well,” said my father, “you get a tax break.”

Yesterday as I drove to town on a grocery run, I listened to MPR’s Kerry Miller speaking with a financial expert. As they discussed the merits of homeownership and the various savings options for retirement, my head started to swim. I may be only 24 (going on 25), but if I plan to follow through with this whole self-employment that means all those yucky decisions about health care and retirement come straight down to . . . me.

I live in the woods living a life that the majority of the Twin Cities metropolis population seems to think they would very much like to lead. The issue is that when many people used to the city life come up here to live out the dream, they often find themselves uncomfortably removed from convenience and quality culture offerings like theatre and ethnic food. Newcomers can be quick to point out the shortcomings in the way the area’s run. Sure it’s dumb to only have one day a year when you can dispose of your electronics and yeah, the county roads probably could use a tad more salt in the winter. That doesn’t mean that the locals won’t resent the suggestion and be loath to change. After all, if we change, who’s to say that we won’t lose what makes us unique? What if the unromantic reality is actually the key to the region’s romance?

I had an early morning of it today and got up before six to get to work on the writing. I have got to get through chapter twelve before it kills me. I’ve figured out what needs to happen in the next chapter to keep up the tension and interest during the currently muddling middle, but I’m struggling to get too terribly excited about the necessary framework of chapter twelve. No more excuses. It has to get done before work today.

The birds are flocking at the feeders today: goldfinches, redpolls, pine grosbeaks, chickadees and the lone hairy woodpecker.

I’m in the midst of baking a big batch of bread. I’m attempting to get all aspects of my schedule under my control and I’m hoping that they’ll be enough bread that I won’t have to do this again for a while.  

Read more ...

Back to Blogging: The First Post

 This week I'm participating in the SITS Back to Blogging Challenge, a week-long challenge meant to help bloggers assess and refocus their blogs. Today's assignment is to revisit the first post ever posted in this blog.  This blog's inaugural post, What Happened to Thoreau, is pasted below. The blog was originally  posted on October 6, 2009:


What Happened to Thoreau 
 
“Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.” -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

In the years leading up to my college graduation, I took to reading writer self-help books. Besides the dictionary and Strunk and White’s Elements of Style, books like I’m an English Major – Now What? and The Well-Fed Writer began to appear on my shelves. With a bachelor’s degree in both English and Communication, I’d been dreaming of making a life for myself with a pen and love of literature since my early teens. But like any English major, by the time I graduated, I’d heard enough unsolicited advice to fully acknowledge the multiple (mostly economic) hurdles of an artistic life. I figured I could use any help I could get, self-help books included.

And as I read the various “how-to” books, I was struck by another perceived aspect of the writing life. It seemed Thoreau remained an anomaly. Anymore, the woods had been forgotten, while starving writers congregated in the metro area’s damp apartments, eating ramon noodles and wrestling with their less than lucrative muse.

While I never got too excited about Thoreau’s Walden, I do live in the woods of northeastern Minnesota in 12 x 20 shack with a “manfriend." Though our Shack is at least two-thirds again as big as Thoreau’s one-man cabin, there are plenty of parallels. We live a quiet life reflecting on observations and interests, removed to a certain degree (but far from completely) from the hustle of modernity.

Where there are people, there are opportunities; I understand why the city claims so many. Employment’s not easy in a rural area – especially one focused on the seasonal tourist industry – and a career that dovetails with your education is more often than not out of the question. So, in a precarious balance of finances and dreams, I work a seasonal job in the summer, currently waitress, and always spend my free time writing. The writing self-help books, with their advice on how to hawk your writing skills to your locally-based corporation, aren’t much help to me. I have a novel in its first edit and plenty of fictional works in progress. I also work on freelance articles, usually for the regional market.

I’m far from the only rural writer. For centuries, writers retreated to the peace and productivity of a country cottage. Thoreau, Jane Austen, Emily Dickinson were all rural writers. In recent years, Annie Proulx has achieved enormous success and Michael Perry’s writing of rural Wisconsin has been well accepted.

These writers have left huge footsteps to follow in and I can’t pretend I’ll be encroaching on their shadows any time soon. But they prove the best career advice for writers may in actuality stem from the American Transcendentalists Thoreau hobnobbed around with: to find what is inside by going outside and immersing ourselves in the beautiful. This blog serves as my personal study of writing and the rural life in a world run by metropolis. I don’t expect to find romance or glamour. In truth, I don’t know what I’ll find, so I’ll keep to this record of my experiences, a memoir of sorts, of woods and words.

 And today, still here, still wrangling the words in the woods. But something have changed. Writing success has grown over the last year and I've been glad to take you all along via the blog. The Shack is a thing of the past, now the manfriend and I share a cozy little cabin and if I like, when I'm writing I can actually shut the door and just have it be me and my laptop. The blog lead to my radio commentary, also named Of Woods and Words,  with the local radio station. The blog's been an excellent excuse to keep writing this past year and over time it's grown from a rambling rural writer memoir to a slightly more focused writer's blog. Neither the woods or words are going anywhere.

Read more ...