Food Mash Up: Banana Split Ice Cream Sanwich

Tonight I’m doing something a bit different for a Food Mash Up, normally I combined two foods that are not normally thought of together, instead of that, tonight I’m going to make it easier for those of you who have a hard time choosing between an Ice Cream Sandwich and a Banana Split, enjoy!

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Banana Split Ice Cream Sandwich

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We have two radically different desserts here to combine:

 

Banana Split: A concoction of a banana sliced in half, placed in a dish and covered with ice cream, chocolate sauce and topped with a maraschino cherry.

Ice Cream Sandwich: Two cookies placed around a slab of ice cream, which allows for a spoon free, yet not as messy way to enjoy ice cream.

 

The key is to stay as true to each as possible, while incorporating the best part of each. This is a lot easier than might be expected. There are several other attempts at creating such a delight, but the ones I’ve seen all miss the point of being self contained.

The history of each of these items are blurred to say the least, no one knows who exactly invented either dessert, but suffice to say they are both well loved.

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What you need:

Bananas – sliced the easy way (into circles)

Ice cream -softened but not melted

Large ice cream sandwich cookies – the lager the better.

Maraschino cherries – optional – chopped

Shredded coconut

Good quality chocolate bar – grated

Whipped cream -optional-

Melted chocolate, beginning to cool.

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Building a better sandwich:

 

Take one cookie and put a thin coating of ice cream on it, maybe 1/4″ thick, depending on how thick you want the final sandwich to be.

After spreading your ice cream, place a layer of sliced banana on it, make sure to squeeze as many slices as possible on it without too much over lapping. Next spread another thin layer of ice cream over the bananas, being careful to cover all the bananas.

On top of the second layer of ice cream, sprinkle your coconut and chocolate, you want to make sure there is enough of each, however do not cover all of your ice cream, other wise your sandwich may not stay in one piece.

Add a third layer of ice cream. On top of your third layer of ice cream, add your chopped maraschino cherries, again making sure not to cover quite all of the ice cream below.

Add a fourth layer of ice cream or use whipped cream if you’d prefer, top with another cookie.

Freeze the banana spit sandwich until firm, then dip the edges in the melted chocolate and refreeze for half an hour and enjoy.

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There you have it, a new treat for a hot summer day, I hope you enjoyed this post.

Thanks for reading!

I’m back!

I’m back after a week break from blogging. It was nice to take some time away from my blog and ignore stats and likes for a few days. Now that I’ve had a week off, I’m hoping that I can be funnier than I was recently.

 As it has been two weeks since I last wrote about the weather, ice cream and comic books, it would seem that I have a lot to talk about tonight, doesn’t it?

 First I’d like to remind everyone that even though Labor Day has come and gone, ice cream is still in season for a while longer, so don’t forget to try the following flavors before its time to move on to hot chocolate:

• Vanilla 
• Chocolate 
• Mint chocolate chip 
• Neapolitan 

In the same vain, lemonade is still in season too, while it doesn’t have to be as warm to really enjoy lemonade, it is always best on the warmest days around:

• Plain lemon
• Strawberry-lemonade 
• Cranberry lemonade 

These three are all worth sampling at least once before summer is truly over.

The weather has still been summer like for most of us, but a hint of Fall is in the air, warning us to enjoy these days while we can, for all too soon Winter will join forces with Fall and together they will cause the trees to paint their leaves before they fall to the ground just in time for the first snow storm, and dreams of crisp leaves crunching underfoot will be over for another year.

 It’s always comic book weather though, which is one thing that you can look forward to no matter what the weather and s like, hot or cold, comic books are always there to be read, a guaranteed escape from the events of the world, at least if you pick the right ones.

 Lastly, chocolate chip cookies are about to be in their prime season, while they are harvested from ovens the world over all year lm g, it isn’t until Fall when they are at their peak, like an apple, chocolate chip cookies vary in shape and size, but unlike apples and all fruits, a chocolate chip cookie is always tasty.

 Thanks for reading and thanks for understanding my need last week for a break.

Fairwell August, until we meet again next year…

August is all but over, which is why I’m forced to say that the penultimate month of summer has come to an end.

 August was an odd month this year, a month of extremes, hot highs that caused droughts and cool lows that have prompted warnings that fall and winter are coming early this year.

 One thing that August didn’t have was much moisture, it’s been a dry month all my over. Some rain would have been appreciated, instead there were a few clouds and plenty of haze from wildfires.

 The best part of this past month, in my opinion, had to be ice cream, although how can you go wrong with ice cream? At least if the flavor a are those you enjoy.

 However we are now moving, slowly but surely, into hot chocolate season, so make sure you get your fill of ice cream before it’s too late!

 Comic books are also an item that goes hand in hand with summer, don’t you think? While they are great all year long, there is something about comic books in the summer that makes them twice as pleasant.

One thing that the forthcoming Fall has going for it is the rash of fools politicians trying to inflate hot air balloons debating their positions on policies that have so many hidden items that they say and do something entirely different are confusing even to the people who wrote them. The coming political season (which at current count will be 14+ months long) has the added bonus of helping to offset a possible cold winter.

 However politics are not what I wanted to talk about tonight, I really wanted to discuss the sweet tanginess of lemonade.

Lemonade is another one of those things normally considered a summer treat, even though there isn’t any law against drinking it all year long, it is something most of us wait all winter to taste again the sweet, tangy, tart goodness of lemonade is one taste that nothing can quite compare with, especially on a hot summer day with the sun beating down on you.

 So as summer winds down, kick back and enjoy those last glasses of lemonade and the last bowls of ice cream, it’ll be months before you can begin to enjoy them again.

 What is your favorite part of summer that you’ll miss during the winter?

 Thanks for reading.

Three Fun Things To Do This Weekend

​ Tonight I thought I’d help those of you who might be having trouble deciding what to do this weekend, I hope these ideas entertain you.

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First thing you’ll need is a pet, the next thing is to convince your pet that they are now named Yoric, at least for the weekend. If you can’t convince your pet to be called Yoric, a human will do,  this will likely be easier as you can pay them.

 The second thing  thing you need is a costume, Shakespearian era, two are better than one, put your pet or friend in the second.

 Finally, go walking around your neighborhood, asking everyone you encounter if they have seen Yoric. At so,e point you should arrange to meet Yoric. If you have a human friend playing Yoric, to keep the fun going a lot longer, when you part company, go around talking about how well you know Yoric.

 This is good for hours of fun, you might even end up with many other people joining in the fun, a few might even offer you a jacket, a straight jacket that is.

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The next idea for your weekend required a small list for f things:

• Vanilla ice cream 
• Chocolate chips
• Ice cream scoop
• Ice cream cones (optional)
• Strawberries
• Banana, sliced into small pieces

 You are making ice cream snowmen, so you’ll have some leeway.

 You’ll need three scoops of ice cream, each one smaller than the one before, stack the scoops of ice cream on top of that be another.

 Next take a slice of banana or two depending on the length of the slice and your preference. Insert the banana below the smallest scoop of ice cream.

 Next take your chocolate chips and use them for the features of your snowman, eyes, ears, mouth and coat buttons if desired.

 You can use the end of an ice cream cone for a hat if you wish.

After creating your ice cream snowmen, you’ll be able to tell everyone that you made snowmen over the weekend.

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This idea is perfect for a hot weekend day when you have nothing else to do:

You’ll need:

• Lemon juice
• Sugar
• Honey
• Various fruits
• Plenty of cold water
• Plenty of ice
• Several pitchers

This fun tasty adventure is trying to make a better lemonade.

 First off you’ll need to make the base for your lemonade, which s just 1 part lemon juice and 3 parts water. Add either sugar or honey to sweeten your lemonade, it is best to sweeten it to your taste, which is why I’m not giving any advice on the amount to add.

 Now that you have your lemonade base, add some fruits to it, this best fruits are juicy ones, this will vastly reduce the amount of time your lemonade needs to sit before you taste it.

 Using other fruit juices instead of whole fruits will also allow you to try the final product quicker.

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Thanks for reading, I hope you’ll have some fun this weekend.

Welcome to August

Welcome to August, the month known for the many days of dogs of summer, or in other words it’s the dog days of summer. 

 Why are these days called the dog days of summer? Basically just because of how hot these summer days tend to be.

 Now on to the interesting stuff, where should we start? Cookies? Ice cream? Comic books? Lemonade? There is a lot to cover, so let’s get busy!

 Ice cold lemonade is always good during these hot summer days, the colder the better, not only will it cool you off, but if it’s cold enough it will stay cold for quite a while even on a hot day, a few ice cubes tossed in will keep it cold for a few extra minutes.

  Ice cream is another good thing to enjoy on a hot day, however it melts very quickly, so you must make sure you enjoy it quickly. If you don’t want to eat it quickly, I suggest only eating ice cream at the north or South Pole where it’s cold enough to keep it from melting. If you can’t afford to take a trek to eat your ice cream, you can always take a large bowl of ice and place your bowl of ice cream on top, this will lengthen the time your ice cream will remain frozen.

 Cookies of any type are good, used to top your ice cream they can only be made better, however I suggest chocolate chip cookies if only for the fact that you can add more chocolate chips without anyone being the wiser.

One thing you should be cautious of while you enjoy your ice cream, cats. Cats tend to enjoy ice cream a lot, mostly vanilla in my experience, however I don’t doubt that they enjoy other flavored as well, so don’t turn your back on your ice cream if your cat is anywhere near.

That brings us to comic books, those wonderful things that are very nice for summer reading. They can be carried easily, they are intriguing enough to hold your attention on a hot day while not requiring  too much thought to enjoy, which is about as perfect combination of everything you could want for summer reading.

 I hope you can find the time to read a comic book, enjoy some lemonade and eat even more ice cream this week.

 Thanks for reading!

How to ruin any food: Ice cream toppings: fruits

Thanks for joining me again this week, tonight we’re going to finish ruining ice cream toppings!

Last week you’ll remember that we tackled ruining ice cream syrups (https://mageowl.wordpress.com/2015/07/26/how-to-ruin-any-food-ice-cream-toppings-syrups/), tonight we’ll be ruining the fruit you might put on your ice cream.

I hope you’ll find this post as interesting as last weeks!

Before we begin, once more I feel compelled to offer these words:

WARNING: DO NOT READ ANY FURTHER IF YOU ENJOY GOOD FOOD.

The rest of this post in intended to be humorous and not to be taken as new culinary treats about to sweep the nation.Any attempt to ingest the substance described below is not suggested and should be avoided. If you do attempt to taste any of the following food related ideas, please be warned that disgust, nausea and possibly even death could be the result.

History:

Fruits on ice cream date back to the earliest days of ice cream. Depending on how you want to define ice cream, the fruits on top could actually be said to predate actual ice cream as they were put on bowls of flavored snow or ice before cream was widely adopted.

While no one quite knows when ice cream was really invented or what they first put on top, fruits were likely there.

If you’re interested in learning more, these two sites may be of interest to you:

http://www.foodtimeline.org/foodicecream.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_cream

What it is:

Fruits on ice cream are just that; whole or halved or diced fruits sprinkled on top of a bowl of ice cream. Why are they there? To make it healthy of course! As long as you’re eating fruits you can have a second helping… unless you’re eating a bowl of ice cream with ruined fruit topping of course.

 

How to top your ice cream:

There are many methods of topping a bowl of ice cream with fruits.

1. Place a whole piece of fruit, normally something small like a cherry, right on top.
2. Place a piece of fruit on top of your ice cream. Peaches and apples work wonderful this way.
3. Dice up your fruit into small bite size pieces, this method works well when using a medley of fruits.
4. Cut your fruit into spears and poke them into your ice cream, crisscrossing them to resemble a kind of breastwork to keep your spoon away from the ice cream, this can also be useful for ruining your ice cream as when done properly it will prevent you from getting to the ice cream before it’s melted.

There are many other ways to add fruits to your ice cream, experiment and enjoy!

 

How to ruin it:

To make things easier, we’ll break this section down into parts:

1: Whole fruits,

2: Sliced fruits

3: Others

Whole fruits:

Whole fruits normally used to top ice cream include strawberries and cherries. These are used because of their small size which makes it easy to get on your spoon.

I suggest replacing these fruits with any of the following, these  well ruin your ice cream without much effort:

• Cherry tomato
• Strawberry shaped tomato
• Small round bell pepper
• Small round hot pepper
• Olives, black or green, just cover with chocolate syrup to disguise them.
• Use grapes with seeds in place of blueberries, the large seeds will startle whoever is eating them, plus the time spent spitting out the seeds will cause the ice cream to melt, which will also ruin it.

As you can tell, these fruit replacements will not even resemble the original in either taste or texture.

Sliced fruits:

Sliced fruits are normally much larger and typically of a soft nature. Bananas and peaches are commonly used, apples are also used occasionally.

These replacements will be strange enough to make anyone refuse seconds:

• Sliced potatoes, some people might bite into these expecting them to be bananas, they will be surprised.
• Turnips, everyone will turn up their noses at this!
• Sliced and seeded cucumbers, well salted. These will taste odd and melt the ice cream faster, resulting in a double ruin.
• Rutabaga, what kind of ice cream is complete without rutabaga? At least if you’re ruining it.

Any one of these will be sufficient to ruin your ice cream, two or more may be risking a lifelong hatred of ice cream.

Others:

This sections contains everything that doesn’t fit in the other categories:

• Salsa: made up mostly of peppers and tomatoes, this counts as fruits and will ruin any ice cream it come in contact with.
• Pickled jalapenos: Need I say more?
• Pickled Onions: On ice cream? Ruined to the nth degree!

Many people enjoy shredded coconut on top of their ice cream, here are three ways to ruin this idea:

• Salt the coconut to increase the rate of melting.
• Use dried onion slices broken into pieces instead.
• Use small pieces of pasta instead, if you get the right kind, no one will notice the difference until they bite into it.

That’s all I have for tonight, I hope you’ve enjoyed it.

I hope you’ll join me again next week when we ruin another food, if you have a request to see something special ruined, please feel free to ask in the comments.

Thanks for reading and please feel free to share your own ideas for ruining ice cream fruit toppings!

How to ruin any food: Ice cream toppings: syrups

Tonight we’re going to ruin ice cream toppings. There are so many different things people put on top of ice cream that I’m going to break this post into two, tonight we’re going to focus on syrups, next week we’ll focus on fruit toppings.

You might be wondering why I’m ruining ice cream toppings, the reason is that it’s summer, the time everyone eats ice cream, plus I ruined ice cream numerous times last summer, however I neglected to ruin toppings in a dedicated post.

Are you ready?

Before we begin, once more I feel compelled to offer these words:

WARNING: DO NOT READ ANY FURTHER IF YOU ENJOY GOOD FOOD.

The rest of this post in intended to be humorous and not to be taken as new culinary treats about to sweep the nation.Any attempt to ingest the substance described below is not suggested and should be avoided. If you do attempt to taste any of the following food related ideas, please be warned that disgust, nausea and possibly even death could be the result.

History:

Unfortunately the history behind such ice cream staples as chocolate syrup and strawberry syrup are lost to time. Any number of searches found only the history  of the big brands of these, if that.

Therefore, I’ll create the history for you, please enjoy:

The history of Chocolate syrup:

One day George Washing ton was tired of his ice cream having only fruit on it, he was having supper with the Mexican ambassador at the time, they were in a heated discussion regarding territory. The Mexican ambassador set down his fresh mug of hot chocolate, which he had brought with him from Mexico.  George Washington’s dog chose that moment to chase a cat through the study, upsetting the table with the ice cream and hot chocolate, when the dust had settled, the hot chocolate had been cooled into a syrup by the ice cream. When George Washington tasted it, he declared a national holiday where everyone would try this amazing treat. However not enough cocoa beans could be imported in time and no one celebrated the holiday.

 

The history of Strawberry ice cream syrup:

 

One day in 1813, a woman was making strawberry jam, due to a sudden attack by the British (it was during the War of 1812  after all), she was forced to flee. When she returned hours later, the fire was out and the jam was thin and runny. A wounded solider was helping himself to the almost strawberry jam, ladling it on a bowl of frozen cream, thus was Strawberry syrup born.

 

While this history I just created is doubtful, there is really nothing I could find to counter it.

 

What they are:

Syrups for ice cream come in many flavors, chocolate, strawberry and caramel are the most popular.

The secret is for the syrup to be thin enough that you can spoon, poor or squeeze it on your ice cream while it is room temperature or below (the syrup that is).

 

Due to the number of recipes available online, I have omitted the How to make it section of this post.

 

How to ruin them:

Now we come to the fun part, ruining the syrups.

Chocolate:

Chocolate sauce is very easy to ruin, simply add any of these ingredients into your chocolate sauce:

• Soy sauce
• Worcestershire sauce
• Coffee grounds.
• Grease from cooking or lard, you might have to warm it up first.

 

Strawberry:

This section is broken down in to two parts, a replacement part and an add to part.

Add to:

Add any of these to your normal strawberry syrup to ruin it:

• Steak sauce
• Worcestershire sauce
• Spaghetti sauce (you didn’t expect me to leave this out, did you?).
• Garlic powder (stir in until it is fully blended)

Replace with:

Replace your strawberry syrup with any of these for a wonderful ruined topping:

• Ketchup
• Sweet and sour sauce
• Chilled tomato soup with basil
• Tomato sauce

Caramel:

Caramel sauce is much harder than the others to ruin, however it is still possible:

• Add plenty of salt, it will help melt the ice cream, thus ruining it.
• Garlic powder can also be incorporated into this sauce, however your guests may think you should be incarcerated for doing so, or at least have your cookbooks incinerated.
• Add beef broth instead of milk, it will give it a bit more body.

 

That’s about all the ways I have for ruining ice cream syrups tonight, I hope you’ll join me again next week when we ruin the fruits you can top ice cream with.

Thanks for reading and please feel free to share your own ideas for ruining ice cream toppings!

A bit of everything

I have a bit of everything for you tonight, from food to jokes, random thoughts to whatever else I come up with. I hope you enjoy!

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A bowl of ice cream is best served thusly:

 Two scoops of vanilla ice cream with brown sugar, chocolate sauce (hot fudge is better) and a strawberry on top. Allow the ice cream to melt just enough to mix with the brown sugar.

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When a parrot stole a pirate’s treasure, which he used it to purchase a snack factory, he told everyone “Polly will never want for a cracker again!”

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Blogging should be fun, however some days it can be very hard to come up with ideas, unfortunately there are very few ways to get past the occasional post lacking a firm idea.

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Cats are crazy, need I say more?

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Weekends are short, blog post should be the same on Friday nights.

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 If Julius Caesar had been a cat, might he have said “I came, I saw, I slept.”?

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Finally, I leave you tonight with one more joke, it’s a favorite of mine and I hope yours:

A man walked into a truck stop and ordered a hamburger, as an after thought he added “Hold the pickle.”
 A few moments later, Harry, the truck stop’s harried short order chef whose was very hairy, came marching out on the kitchen and thrust a dripping cucumber into the man’s hand, saying “Hold your own pickle!”

Thanks for reading!

Welcome to July

It’s July now, which means the year is over half way over no matter how you look at it. This means that all to soon we’ll be seeing summer draw to a close and winter attack.

 However, as it is still summer right now, we must turn our minds to that most necessary task of summer: shopping for Christmas gifts. Yes, it’s almost the time where stores will begin pushing for shoppers to buy nearly everything for the winter holidays.

 To give you a hand, I have a few suggestions:

• Chocolate chips, everyone loves them and you can always find a use for another bag.
• Lemon juice, a key ingredient of lemonade and something everyone should give for holidays.
• Comic books, you can never have enough comic books, but one of every comic book ever published and never worry about eating again, as you’ll never be able to afford food.

On a more serious note, there are several things that you need to remember for this month, such as always making sure you have enough ice for your lemonade, that you’re chocolate chip cookies are made with quality brown sugar. Oh, also you need to make sure you read at least four good comic books a week, this should improve your mood and pass the time.

 These are the days comic book lovers should enjoy, reading out in the summer day, feeling the wind rustle the pages of your comfort c book, turning them before you are ready, all while risking the deadly fate of ice cream dripping on each page because you want to know what happens next even as you hurry to enjoy your ice cream that is already melting.

 One should not forget to savor these nice days of summer, all too soon the heat will hit with a vengeance, after which the summer will quickly fade away until you will wonder where the year has gone, so enjoy every day, savor the little things and eat those chocolate chip cookies before they melt!
Thanks for reading.

June: a bug in summer’s ear

Now that Summer has officially begun here in the northern hemisphere, the summer heat is in full swing. There isn’t much you can do about the heat, besides complaining of course, but there are many ways to make the most out of it.

 This is the one time of year no one is going to wonder why you’re eating ice cream five fives an hour, or drinking two pitchers of lemonade during the day.  On the hottest days of the year, it’s also acceptable to eat ice cream sandwiches as a meal, at least as long as you don’t tell anyone, then you’d have to share.

 However, no matter how much you enjoy ice cream and lemonade, there will be a point where you’ll find yourself growing tired of them, this is the point you’ll have to go to some extra work.

 Lemonade can be made fun and tasty again by adding to it, strawberry lemonade is a favorite of many people, something becoming more popular is cranberry lemonade. You might also try limeade, it’s different enough from lemonade that it’ll refresh your tastebuds.

 Ice cream sandwiches can also be spruced up, just eat them while sitting in a spruce tree. You could also make your own ice cream sandwiches by putting a scoop of your favorite flavor of ice cream between two chocolate chip cookies.

 Another way to forget about the heat is to settle down in the coolest place you can find and read a good comic book, you want something dull and boring, or something taking place in the arctic, or Siberia perhaps.

 Don’t expect to see much of your cat right now: cats are smart, they know when to sleep, in this case all day and part of the night, they will be active in the early hours after the temperature cools off, they’ll think you should be active then too, expect them to encourage you to wake up in the middle of the night to feed them.
 All in all, this time of year isn’t too bad if you can just kick back and relax with frozen lemonade and a comic book. I hope you can find time to relax this week.

Thanks for reading.