I did however find the somewhat rare swiss gruyere cheese with relative ease. In addition to our weekly groceries, I also needed to find Vermouth for the French Onion Soup. We checked out and headed home to continue with our birthday preparations.
Once at home (and after the groceries were put away), I started on freezing the ice cream in one of those very trendy no ice and no salt ice cream makers. With my ice cream base chilled nicely, it only took about twenty minutes for the ice cream maker to work its magic. With the help of my still very excited son, we folded into the ice cream some toasted coconut and some homemade honey roasted peanuts (made the day before in the midst of stock and ice cream base making). The ice cream was then transferred to ice cream pint containers (that I saved from our trip to Ohio) and stored in the freezer to harden completely.
After lunch we worked on the children’s birthday gift to daddy. I set up an aisle with a big piece of paper, laid out the paint and brushes, and put the kids in old t-shirts. While my son did most of the painting, his sister also contributed with a few hand prints.
When daddy got home late that night, both my son and I were really excited to give him his ice cream present; my son because he wanted a bite and myself because I wanted to see if it was similar to the ice cream we got in Ohio. Daddy was flabbergasted and said it tasted “out of this world” and better than Ohio! After father and son shared a few bites of ice cream, it went back into the freezer for his actual birthday and we went to bed…
(To be continued…)