pekmez

1) "nutella from the jar"
stole the recipe outright from the web, but hello! it's like eating nutella from the jar, only frozen!

2) elderflower sorbet
wow, this one is perfect and easy. elderflower syrup courtesy of zubatac's parents - who gathered the elderflowers (we were there in peak season) and then made syrup using his great-aunt's recipe and then sent it home with us. Because the syrup is a rather scare resource without waiting till the next season or finding where it grows on the East Coast, I have run experiments with it simply by starting with a small batch of syrup, freezing it, and then refreezing it at slow increments more dilution for test batches. (it only took 2 tries, though.) :)

3) quince ice cream
this one has taken a lot more work. quince sorbet failed - I was going for trying to turn membrillo into a sorbet and have it still look as dark and tasty as much like candied quince as mebrillo does, but I think that's going to have to wait for another baitcon - so far either you lose the quince flavor and color or it's way too sticky and doesn't freeze right because of having too much sugar. 2 tries at adding dairy to a strongly quince flavored syrup and I think I've got a fabulous ice cream, but will work harder on a sorbet another time.

4) bagel ice cream.
yep, I'm nuts. But Wylie Dufresne of WD-50 did it. If I can't get the savory flavor to work out (need sugar to freeze, too much sugar tastes weird) I may have to try again with cinnamon raisin bagels so the sweet is less out of place. The plan is to swirl in cream cheese.

There are also flavors I have developed and would be happy to make again, but I'd better start planning -

sour cherry sour cream
honey yogurt
pomegranate honey sorbet
turkish vietnamese coffee
desert dessert (rosewater ice cream with baklava and coffee and honey swirls)

I'm a member of Temple B'nai Brith in Somerville, and I'm on the board
of directors and a co-chair of the Membership Committee. I've been a
member of TBB since sometime after I moved to Somerville, and really
like the place! For those who might be looking for a place to make
Jewish connections in Somerville, here is an announcement
about our upcoming open house on September 20th and 21st.

I'll be at the open house, and otherwise can occasionally be found at
Shabbat services, other holiday services, or various programs that
catch my interest. Feel free to ask me more about Temple B'nai Brith!
The announcement with details on the open house is below.

TBB OPEN HOUSE SEPTEMBER 20th and 21ST

Looking for a vibrant, egalitarian, and welcoming Jewish community?
Temple B'nai Brith is an independent Jewish congregation serving
Somerville and surrounding communities for over 100 years. We offer
regular Shabbat and alternative worship services, High Holiday
services, and other Jewish holiday services; non-members are welcome!

We will hold an open house weekend on Saturday, September 20th
(10:00am-1:00pm) and Sunday, 21st (11:00am-1:00pm).

On September 20th, you can meet members, visit our Shabbat services,
and attend a kiddush afterwards. On September 21st, you can
meet congregants, enjoy a light brunch, join the Children's School for
its short concluding service at 11:45, and meet our school staff. TBB
is located at 201 Central St, in Somerville, just off Broadway in
Winter Hill.

I recently made some cookies using half a recipe that thus called for half an egg.
With the other half an egg, I mixed it up with some milk and sugar and tried making it into custard. I have never made custard with a real recipe (maybe a pumpkin pie filling is
the closest I've come, and that was a while ago), but it seems I have absorbed enough
cooking knowledge to get the basic idea. a tiny bit of made up custard in a tiny double
boiler with a completely arbitrary amount of milk and sugar, and some cinnamon sprinkled on top, turned out fine and tasty!

So, this is not really a useful medium for this question, but I haven't come up with a good
answer and I'm feeling like I ought to do something and many of the people on my friendslist
are local.

We have a small Somerville backyard. It keeps getting overgrown with weedy grass that likes
to grow really tall, and even in the best of time management scenarios we can manage a cycle
of "whine about it for a month, kill part of an afternoon with a weed whacker, feel grumbly,
repeat." Our time management situation is about to get a lot worse.

In the long term we want to do something cool like plant a ground cover that will take over the yard,
not need mowing, and look nice. Or maybe pave half the yard and ground cover the other half, or something.

In the short term, we just want some way to ignore the problem. I thought we'd pay some
gardener/landscaper type to just deal with it, maybe putting down sod that might stand a chance
against the weeds, but I only found one (via arbitrary google search) and I'm not spending $3K on
a temporary solution that might not work, not even including paying them to come back and mow it or anything.

But given the baby arriving sometime soon, even something less complex would be nice to hire someone
else to Deal With. Anyone got suggestions for someone we could pay to weed whack the yard, and then lay down black tarps or landscaping fabric or something over the yard to just kill it till next spring? Or
even someone who could weed whack or mow it every few weeks till it stops growing this fall?