This month marks the one year anniversary of buying and moving into our house. It’s a little hard to believe it’s already been a year! We had grand plans for the house when we bought it (we still do) but we’ve progressed a little slower (OK significantly slower) than we planned. Our major accomplishment is that we’re halfway through renovating our basement, and really, that’s mostly thanks to Carl (thank you Carl!!!) and to Trevor’s dedicated trench digging. And Trevor has painstakingly renovated the guest room – it’s almost done and is going to look gorgeous with the new orange couch we bought. But even though the to-do list for the house is miles long, I love living in it the way it is. Because it’s ours!

The last time I moved, from the sunny Davis Square house I shared with three roommates, to the little Inman Square apartment Trevor and I moved into, the place that will always be our first apartment, I wrote this post, about all the things I would miss and all the things I was looking forward to. This time, I didn’t have the time to indulge in that kind of thinking before we moved, but now that things are calmer and our new house is starting to feel like ours, I find myself thinking about it more – what I miss, what I love.

There’s so much that I love about our new house. One of the biggest things is the light – every room in our house is filled with sun, and we know at any given time of day the best spot to curl up in the sun for a minute or two. The sun is also the key to the second thing I love – having our own garden, which is thriving. We don’t have tons of space but we are making the most of it: in the front we’ve replaced hedges with a hodge podge of flowers – foxgloves and heather and poppies and whatever else tickled our fancy at the nursery. After much deliberation on varieties, we planted an apple tree this spring, and regularly talk about the wealth of apples we’ll have in oh, say, five years. And along the side of the house are the herbs and veggies and fruit bushes, planted neatly in raised beds that get 10 hours of sun a day this time of year. Almost every night you can find Trevor and I out “walking the grounds,” checking each plant’s progress and then sitting on our stoop to discuss. I love that.

I’m surprised how much I like living in a neighborhood. “Neighborhood” wasn’t particularly high on our list when we were house shopping – we were coming from a series of city apartments where neighbors weren’t really a concept that had much impact on our lives. We never even met any of our neighbors in Cambridge. So we were really lucky to end up moving into a place where neighbor is a word with meaning – people who will take in your trash barrels and check on your house while you’re away, who chat across fences when you both happen to be out. Families with kids that spend all day playing outside. It’s great. And when it’s nice, I like to take long evening walks around the nearby streets, looking at houses and gardens and just enjoying the fact that there’s little traffic and lots of fresh air. In Cambridge I only walked places when I had a destination or an errand – here I walk just to walk.

There’s more. I love having my own office. It might sound materialistic of me, but one of my favorite things is sitting at my gorgeous new desk, with a homemade latte in my favorite mug, snuggled up in my extremely soft jersey robe, catching up on emails and blogging with the early morning sun falling softly through the window. It’s “me-time” at it’s finest. I love that the entire house is filled with gorgeous wooden floors, deeper in color than most. I love that we can change whatever we want about the house. And I like the new routines we’re building, like the Friday morning dates we have at Tamper cafe, one of only two remotely trendy/interesting eating establishments within walking distance.

The list of things that I miss is shorter. I miss being able to walk 30 steps around the corner and find myself in one of best local grocery stores/butchers in the city, the kind of place where you can find pork belly and black pudding and fava beans without having to give it a second thought. Ditto for being able to walk across the street and choose from a selection of trendy bars and restaurants. I miss having a house cleaner – something we could afford when we had fewer rooms and no renovation costs. And I miss being a little closer to our friends, although honestly, we’ve been just as social as before – having easy access to the highway means an Uber home from downtown is only $20 and 15 minutes, which is very doable a few times a month. And I honestly can’t think of anything else I miss. Nothing about the house itself. Just walkability and a handful of individual establishments.

We have a friend who is currently studying for his Master of Wine examination, who knows vast amounts more about wine than I could ever hope to. We have another, mutual, friend who recently brought a bottle of champagne to a soccer game to celebrate a finals win (they lost), only to find upon popping the cork that the champagne had gone flat. Upon discussing this event our wine-y friend told us – “Never save champagne. Open it up on a Tuesday night just because.” We are guilty of holding on to two bottles of fancy champagne that I know have been improperly stored. So we heeded his advice and opened one, just because, and also to celebrate our home-ownership anniversary. We drank half and the rest we poured over this gorgeous Rhubarb Campari Sorbet, which we slupred while watching Game of Thrones (now #champagneofthrones).

A few things to note. One, yes, it might seem wasteful to pour Veuve Cliquot over sorbet. I say, whatever floats your boat. Two, yes, the sorbet in some of these photographs is not at all set – it was almost Game of Thrones time and I couldn’t wait any longer. I need a blast chiller. Three, because of the aforementioned not-set sorbet, I photographed these again the next night. And yes, I opened another bottle of prosecco. Only this time, it was a $10 bottle of La Marca that’s been in our fridge for 2 1/2 years, so, about time. Which brings me to the main point of this paragraph – the prosecco was actually a much better match for the sorbet. It is significantly sweeter and blends better with the sweet and tangy sorbet. So, in conclusion, open your fancy champagne on a Sunday night just because. But if you’re going to pour it over sorbet, open the $10 prosecco instead. Or open both and live it up.

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Rhubarb Campari Sorbet

Makes 1 1/2 pints (3 cups). A Katie at the Kitchen Door original recipe.

• 1 lb. rhubarb, roughly chopped into segments (about 4 cups chopped)
• 1/2 c. water
• 1 c. sugar
• 3 TBS campari

1. Add rhubarb, water, and sugar to a large saucepan and bring to a simmer over medium heat. Simmer until the rhubarb is very soft and almost falling apart, about 10-15 minutes, stirring frequently. Remove from the heat and transfer to a blender. Blend on high until the mixture is a very smooth puree. Always use caution when blending hot liquids! Pour the blended mixture through a fine mesh strainer, using a spatula to press the mixture through the strainer into a large bowl. Stir the campari into the strained rhubarb puree until evenly combined. Chill the mixture until very cold.
2. Churn the chilled rhubarb puree in an ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Once churned, you may need to let the sorbet sit in the freezer for another 1-3 hours before it is firm enough to scoop.

The post The New Place // Rhubarb Campari Sorbet with Prosecco appeared first on Katie at the Kitchen Door.

It’s been a hot summer.  Maybe it seems hotter because it’s my first full summer in the city, where I’m pretty much a sticky mess topped with a fine layer of dust by noon, but according to the news, there’s more to it than the heat island effect – it’s been unusually hot all over the country.  There’s even a wikipedia page about it, so it must be true.  But having a scorcher of a summer isn’t all bad – it means happy tomatoes, extra-refreshing dips in the pond, and an excuse to eat even more ice cream than I normally might.

Making at least three kinds of ice cream was on my summer bucket list this year (stay tuned for an update soon!), and this plum sorbet makes three.  Not that that means there won’t be one or two more batches before the weather turns :-).  I was surprised by the simplicity and wholesomeness of this recipe – all you do is toss some plum halves with a bit of sugar and honey, blend, then freeze, and you have a gorgeously purple, refreshing, smooth sorbet.  Actually, the texture of this sorbet is easily the best of any homemade ice cream I’ve made – it doesn’t melt on contact with your spoon, and it has just enough airy-smoothness for my taste.  It’s another winning recipe from Suzanne Goin’s Sunday Suppers at Lucques, a book in which not a single recipe I’ve tried has been disappointing.  Suzanne suggests pairing this sorbet with these molasses cookies to make ice cream sandwiches, something I didn’t try this time around but definitely will in the future.

Counting sorbet as a “health” recipe for Greatist may seem a little suspect, but everyone needs a little something sweet sometimes – why not satisfy your cravings with a relatively light treat packed with fresh fruit?  You could even reduce the sugar somewhat, although your sorbet will freeze harder and be less creamy if you do so, as the sugar is one of the main things that keeps ice cream from freezing (read more here).  Head on over to Greatist for the recipe, and while you’re over there, check out their fun ice cream infographic.  (See, I’m not the only one who thinks ice cream has a place on health websites!)

Other tasty ice cream recipes from here…

• Lemon basil sorbet
• Cherry-chocolate ice cream
• Lemon buttermilk ice cream
• Roasted cinnamon ice cream
• Bailey’s fudge ripple ice cream

… and around the blogosphere

• Chocolate pretzel frozen custard from A Spicy Perspective
• Grapefruit and rosemary granita from In Sock Monkey Slippers
• Blackberry-cabernet sorbet from Gimme Some Oven
• Caramel brownie chunk nutella ice cream from Brave Tart
• Goat cheese ice cream with roasted strawberries from Heather Homemade
• Basil olive oil gelato from Cookie Talk

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Now that summer is in full swing, it’s ice-cream time.  For my birthday this year, my parents got me the cuisinart ice cream maker – one of those cute bright red ones – that had been at the top of my kitchen wish list.  Soon after my birthday (in April it was already summer in North Carolina), I made the inaugural batch of frozen goodness, a lemon-basil sorbet with such a strong, refreshing flavor that if I ever have a fancy-schmancy restaurant, this will be the palate cleanser I serve on a spoon between courses.  It was awesome, and I was super proud of it.  Then came graduation, and May, and I packed up the ice cream maker along with the rest of my belongings and tucked it away into the U-box I had ordered, which I had been assured I would receive within 5-7 days of putting it in their hands.  (If you don’t like frustrating customer service stories that might also be construed as plain old whining, skip to the recipe now.)

Ha.  Hahaha.  That did not work out exactly as planned.  Or at all as planned.  From the moment I arrived home from Miami and saw that Megan’s box was still sitting in the parking lot 5 days after it was supposed to be picked up, I had a bad feeling about U-box.  Then I called the office and they had lost the online reservation I had made a month in advance.  Now I had a really bad feeling about U-box.  Then they didn’t drop it off until 5 minutes before closing time.  Then, when I called and really needed them to pick it up by 1 in order to make my flight home, I spent half my moving day on hold, and the guy with the trailer didn’t show up until 5 minutes before my cab arrived to take me to the airport.   Not to mention the fact that every time I did manage to speak to a person they said, “now this is getting stored in Chapel Hill, correct?”  “No,” I would answer, “it’s getting shipped to Massachusetts.”  By the time they drove away with all of my personal belongings, U-box was pretty much at the top of my least favorite companies list.  After Time Warner Cable and The Belmont.

About 10 days later, after several more calls to remind them that it was supposed to end up in Massachusetts, I received an email saying my box had arrived.  “I guess I should have given them the benefit of the doubt,” I thought.  Upon arrival at the storage facility, the guy clipped off the lock (I forgot my keys), opened the bolts, swung open the door and… voila!  It was not my stuff.  My name was written on the box in sharpie.  The serial code matched the one on my order.  But the belongings were not mine.  Luckily, I had snapped a picture of the serial code on my actual box just before it pulled away.  So, in an ideal world, they should be able to track it down pretty quickly.  Sigh.  Not so much.  To make a long story just a little bit less long, it took them 5 days to find the box in Texas, another 10 days to actually ship the box from Texas (so much for expedited), and 3 days in transit.  All told, it took over a month from the day the box left to receive my stuff (I really started missing my shoes, man), probably over 8 hours on the phone with 6 different offices, and a whole lot of headache before the issue was resolved.  You, too, can have this experience for only $800!  Ugh.

In the meantime, I’ve been craving this sorbet.  Every time I walk by the basil and get a whiff of it I think, mmm, sorbet.  Too bad I can’t make any.  But, the past is the past, all’s well that ends well, forgive and forget, etc: I have my ice cream maker, and ice cream has been made!  Like I said, made at full intensity, this sorbet is too strong flavored to eat a full bowl of it – it makes a better amuse bouche or palate cleanser.  Watered down a bit though, it’s infinitely refreshing.  The basil really comes through and adds a little bit of herbal intrigue to every bite.  So here’s to summer, fresh herbs, ice cream makers, and having my shoes back.

Lemon-Basil Sorbet

Makes about 4 cups.

• 1 c. sugar
• 2 c. water
• 15-20 large leaves fresh basil
• zest of one lemon
• 1 c. lemon juice

1. In a medium saucepan, heat water and sugar over medium-high heat, stirring until sugar is completely dissolved.  Remove from heat, and add basil and lemon zest.  Let steep for 10-15 minutes, then remove and discard the basil leaves and mix the lemon juice into the syrup. Place the mixture in the fridge for at least 2 hours, until completely chilled.  Set up ice cream maker, then pour the chilled mixture into the ice cream maker and follow the manufacturer’s instructions.  Note: for stronger flavored, but slushier sorbet, reduce the water to 1 cup and the lemon juice to 1/2 cup.

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