It is said that stress can cause very serious health problems including insomnia, depression, high blood pressure, and weight gain. Therefore, rather than tell you about all of the disasters that occurred last night and then end with a dramatic finale of success I shall tell you right from the beginning that last night’s dinner ended up being a success. It was a near thing, but we pulled through. So now you can feel free to read on without anxiety or stress.

7:30am I awaken. But shit! It’s an hour later than I thought I set my alarm for and now I don’t have time to pick out my bread recipe and set up the starter dough, I have to race to Cam’s and steal his ice cream maker before he leaves for work.

8:30am I am sitting on Cam’s porch with the door to his house locked. He’s not answering his phone or my knocks on his door, but I know he’s in there, I can hear him. At least I have Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle to amuse me until he answers the door and hands over the ice cream maker.

9:00am I should be working, but instead I’m looking up a recipes for strawberry ice cream. I’ve never made ice cream before, so this is a totally new experience for me. Harold McGee has a great section on the theory of ice cream in his On Food and Cooking, but I need some specific ideas on proportions of cream and sugar to strawberries before I can start. I want to use up two pounds of strawberries before they go bad.

9:30am FedEx arrives at my work and I get slammed with samples. Of course on the day that I come in late, want to take a long lunch, and hope to leave early I have more samples than I have ever received before. Over 100. I’m hopelessly screwed.

12:15pm I escape work. I have 60 samples prepped and another 40 on my hotplate. I’m going to take my chances by running to the store and getting things started at home. I figure if I can just make and chill the custard (3 hours of chilling time required) and set up the starter for the bread (4 hours rising time) that I’ll have enough time this evening to get everything ready.

2:15pm After two frantic hours of dicing strawberries, separating eggs, scalding milk, kneeding dough, and getting honey stuck to every conceivable kitchen appliance I am back at work. Although my house is now a disaster zone I think that I’m at least kind of on schedule.

5:00pm I should be leaving work now if I were to keep with my schedule, but I’m not even done analyzing my samples and there’s clean up and report checking to do after that. I’m beginning to freak out a bit.

6:15pm I finally leave work. At this point if I let my bread rise for the three required extra hours it will be 9:15 before it even goes in the oven and people won’t be able to eat dinner until 10:00. Fortunately, I planned for problems and purchased a loaf of nice 7-grain bread from a bakery in Chapel Hill, NC. It won’t be quite as nice and homemade, but it will be done.

6:30pm Well, I’ve killed the bread. By not reading Rose Levy Beranbaum’s The Bread Bible instruction thoroughly enough I added my salt too soon and killed my poor little yeasts. Thank goodness for 9^th Street Bakery.

7:00pm As Brynne and Chelsea attempt to set up the ice cream maker they discover that an important component is missing. The lid that covers the canister is nowhere to be found. Crap. When Cam’s girlfriend calls 2 minutes later and offers to bring strawberry shortcake I gratefully accept the offer.

7:15pm After messing with the ice cream maker a bit more we discover that the lid is even more important than previously assumed. We figured that if we were willing to make a big mess that we could still make ice cream, but no: without the lid the motor does not turn the blade and there is no churning action. None of us is quite willing to give up on the idea of homemade ice cream, but none of us is willing to invest in a new ice cream maker right this second. At least The Salad is done.

 

7:30pm Chelsea is churning the motherfucking ice cream by hand! And the craziest part is that it seems to be working. As she spins the blade in the canister the ice cream does seem to be thickening. With this taken care of I turn my attention to frying bacon while Brynne slices tomatoes and fresh cheese.

8:00pm Success. The salad is made and dressed. The sandwich fillers are assembled. The now hand churned ice cream is sitting in the freezer chilling which it will do for the next two hours. More people have appeared and we start in on some salad and sandwiches.

 

 

10:00pm Strawberry shortcake baked by Minta is served with a side of strawberry ice cream churned by Chelsea. Life doesn’t get any better.