Ahhh, the rhythm of the seasons...Early morning prowlers sneaking through backyards, driveways and garages, peering in windows and knocking on doors demanding to give away cash. It must be yard sale time!
Known by various regional monikers the world over (stoop sale and boot sale are my trans Atlantic faves), the buying and selling of one's used items is a generally well accepted past time, except if you happen to live in Switzerland. I couldn't even find a charity shop when I lived there. Either they don't have any thing they need to get rid of, or the Swiss are too polite to share that information with the general public. Stateside, way before the wonder drug that appears to be reality TV, Americans have been exposing their jock straps, bed pans and crock pots to curbside public appraisal, all in the hopes of carving out more space to store more stuff.
And like a good American, instead of wearing a flag lapel pin, I recently took advantage of a classic yard sale moment and bought an ice cream maker, a purchase I had been contemplating for a good long while. Not a huge fan of appliances that do one thing, and I'm not talking about gobbling up counter space in your kitchen, it seemed a larger physical commitment than a financial gamble. Where would I keep it? I even dabbled with the idea of getting one of those ice cream balls, that you fill with ingredients and then roll around the bonfire to activate its magical frozen powers. Seeing as I don't have room for a bonfire, I opted for the plug in variety.
Never hopeful, I remained skeptical until I tasted my first batch.
Kerpow, Batman. The best 5 yard sale dollars I spent this spring! I used whatever fruits I had on hand that fateful afternoon, the day I will remember as the severing of my love ties with Ciao Bella Sorbet, sob, sob; (well, except for their blood orange, which remains PERFECT and is continually sought after while forageing in the food wilds). David Lebovitz has written a great primer on ice creams, sorbets, granitas and more: The Perfect Scoop. He worked at Chez Panisse for many years and now lives in Paris, in case you need any convincing of his powers of good taste.
I riffed off one of his recipes, combining two different fruits because I didn't have 2 mangoes on hand. The end result was a truly fab combo, both fruits spoke up and worked well together.
MANGO/BLACK RASPBERRY SORBET
1 large ripe mango
1 cup of black raspberries (I used frozen because I had them on hand)
2/3 cup sugar
2/3 cup water
5 teaspoons freshly squeezed lime juice
1 TBL dark rum
pinch of salt
Peel the mango and cut away the flesh from the pit. Cut it into chunks and put into a blender with black raspberries, sugar, water, lime juice, rum and salt. Squeeze the mango pit over blender to pull out as much of the pulp and juice as you can. Puree the mixture until smooth. Chill the mixture thoroughly, then freeze it in your ice cream maker according to Manufacturer's instructions (which hopefully were included in your yard sale find). Once you take it out of the machine it will need to spend a few more hours in your freezer to be really frozen...if you can wait that long to eat it.
I realize that Alex Jordan's House on the Rock, in Spring Green, Wisconsin, has been covered thoroughly on the pages of this very blog before. But, while rummaging though dusty old photographs in my hard drive I remembered that Jim and I visited the place several years ago, and I never got around to putting the photos that I took up on the web in any capacity. This is in part because most of the pictures I snapped—during our endless, day-long walk through the attraction's dreamy, fluctuating, warrenlike corridors—came out too dark and blurry (I'm no wizard when it comes to dark settings and digital cameras). Nevertheless, eons later I've weeded out the ones that turned out okay enough, and uploaded them onto 
