Ice Cream Tubbie

Scenario: hot summer night, time for dessert. Someone hands out plates of blueberry cobbler and then puts out a couple of tubs of ice cream and a scoop. Everyone serves him/herself to a little ice cream and everyone digs into the dessert and everyone forgets about the tubs of ice cream. Ice cream soup.

Enter the Ice Cream Tubbie, an insulated container with a freezable gel lid that is a perfect fit for a pint of ice cream. The insulation will slow the descent into soup, and if someone remembers to put the lid on, the ice cream can last up to 90 minutes at room temperature (assuming you don't live in the tropics).

Tubbie comes in several colors and is sold by zak! designs for $15.

Soy wrappers for sushi

Who makes sushi at home, raise your hand? I saw these colorful soy wraps and thought how cool it would be if I actually made sushi at home, especially since I am a borderline seaweed hater. But then I thought (because I'm in the clutches of a low-carb diet at the moment) that it might also be cool to use these as low-carb sandwich wraps.

The SushiParty soy wrappers are about 7 inches square. Each sheet has 15 calories, .5 gram of fat, and 1 gram of carbohydrate. Just for the sake of comparison, sandwich wraps (of a similar size) can have 170 calories, 5 grams of fat, and 52 grams of carbohydrate.

And [insert trumpet fanfare] they're gluten-free. (When will GF issues subside? Anyone?)

A lot of upside. The downside is that, like many things made with soybeans, it has an extremely neutral flavor. (Can things be extremely neutral? Is it like very unique?) But they look mahvelous. Each package has 5 different sheets: yellow (turmeric), orange (paprika), plain, green (spinach) and sesame. You can find them in sort of random places, including Walmart. They cost about $3. Or, if you're really into the concept, you can buy a 6-pack from Amazon for $24.

Zoo popsicles

I am definitely still pandering to my inner child (actually, it might be my outer child, too...). I like Hello Kitty, silly gadgets and these zoo-shaped popsicle molds.

But here's where my inner grown-up takes over: I do not want to have my pop made with the mysterious colored sugar slush that kids love to eat.

This is what I want instead:
Lion: Super-strong brewed espresso, maple syrup, milk
Monkey: Pomegranate juice, straight up
Polar bear: Coconut milk, guava nectar
Elephant: Pink grapefruit juice with a splash of pineapple juice

The set of 4 Zoo Pop molds is $15 from perpetual kid.

The best frozen pizza

I'm not a big fan of frozen pizza. It's always too bready or too cheesy or too soggy. So when I was at the Fancy Food Show earlier this month, someone offered me a piece of pizza that I couldn't squirm out of accepting....thank goodness, because it knocked my socks off.

It's called American Flatbread and it's been around for a bunch of years (since 1987, in fact), so maybe I'm the last person on the block to get a taste of it. American Flatbread began as a local bakery with a wood-fired oven on a farm in Waitsfield, Vermont. There are now several restaurant/bakeries scattered about the state (plus one, and another on its way, in Virginia), and Lareau Farm (which still houses the principal bakery) is a working farm that also operates as an inn.

The pizzas are organic, hand-made, wood-fired and delicious. The 4 varieties are: Cheese & Herb, Revolution (tomato sauce, caramelized onions, mushrooms), Sun-Dried Tomato & Mushroom, Tomato Sauce & Three Cheese, and Ionian Awakening (tomato sauce, Kalamata olives, 4 cheeses, rosemary). The pies come in 12-inch or 9-inch sizes, depending on the variety; prices are in the neighborhood of $7.50 for the small pies and $12 for the large.

P.S. Their tomato sauce is wood-fired, too [swoon].

To find a store that sells American Flatbread pizza, check their store finder.

Salad dressing jar

This is kind of a cool idea. It's like the Good Seasons dressing mix jar but without the seasoning packet. The jar has 4 different dressing recipes (basic vinaigrette, Caesar dressing, Greek dressing and fat-free raspberry vinaigrette) with the levels of the liquid ingredients marked on the jar. The nonliquid ingredients are also listed by their amounts. Of course you have to like the dressing recipes for this to be valuable, but if you do this sure beats getting measuring cups dirty. The Dressing Jar is $7 from the Blue Ribbon General Store.

The pumpkin tree project: day 60

Blossoms on both types of pumpkin, though Wee-Be-Little (right) is still edging out Sweet Lightning. I'm told that there need to be male and female flowers in order for any fruit to grow, but boy oh boy, do I not know how to tell which flowers are the males. Wait, maybe it's the ones playing video games in the basement...