ice cream! only just the beginning...

On Father's Day I suggested we grab some ice cream at Anderson's. I kept carrying on and on about how delicious this custard ice cream in WNY is (I guess they are renowned for it kinda like Buffalo Wings, Beef on Weck & Peanut Stick). When I was there last time I saw they make a sugar free custard soft serve so that sealed the deal for Nuno. Lucky for me, the Anderson's closest to the Lake Effect Diner had Banana as their flavour on Father's Day. Not only that, every dad recieves a free Kit Kat Arctic Swirl (like a DQ Blizzard).

Here it is in all it's glory.

Katie got a cone and couldn't finish it.

There was a Target right next door to Anderson's and they had ice cream machines on sale. So I snapped one right up. I've been wanting to make ice cream for weeks now which was brought on by all these plentiful strawberries. Even though I live a hop, skip and a jump away from Avondale Dairy Bar, I really don't like their ice cream. It's friggin' so expensive! I shutter when they WEIGH your treat to determine a price - which always works out to $7 on my most conservative orders. Anderson's is two bucks, richer and creamier. Arg! Sorry, had to get that off my chest. Anyways...

I started with Strawberry Frozen Yogurt. I had all the ingredients right away in my fridge to make it. The homemade ice cream guru right now is David Lebovitz who's taken the culinary literary world by storm with, many books, one of which is "Perfect Scoop: Ice Creams, Sorbets, Granitas and Sweet Accompaniments". Through his blog I found the recipe I used to make this frozen yogurt.

Just a couple small revisions to this. I strained low fat yogurt and was left with only half a cup, so I made the rest with half & half. This worked perfectly because it supplied the fat that wasn't present in the yogurt. The strawberries are from Bry-Anne Farms at the St. Catharines Farmer's Market.

Here's my dessert for lunch today. My dad was around Niagara-On-The-Lake and brought around the first picking of cherries from a local stand. They aren't quite ready to be made into jam, but are nice for snacking.

father's day and banana-oat smoothies

I knew we had to make Father's Day very special for Nuno since we were celebrating his first one ever! He awoke to a surprise of Owen in his I Heart Dad sleeper. Among his many gifts, Nuno is pictured here in his Goonies shirt and wearing his new belt and new wallet.

Since the plan was to go to the Lake Effect Diner for brunch, I made a light breakfast of a Banana-Oat Smoothies. This is so delicious, I think I'll make this many more times in the future. Again, this is a recipe that Owen could enjoy as well. I just prepped the smoothie without the honey (which babies are not to eat), took out his portion first and then added the honey for Nuno and my servings. This is very sweet and Owen didn't really seem to enjoy it. I decided to add his baby oatmeal to his smoothie to make it a little thicker and more palatable.

Then it as off to B-lo for some Lake Effect Diner delicous-ness. We saw a Diner's, Drive-In's & Dives episode at this location and were so impressed by the effort that goes into some of the food we just had to give it a shot. This is a true diner - it is a small cart from Pennsylvania transplanted onto Main Street Buffalo serving all-day breakfast, sandwiches and all the usual diner-style suspects.

I had a reuben sandwich while Nuno went for a breakfast which included eggs, corned beef, red-eye gravy, homemade sausage patties.

Although it was Father's Day, Nuno ended up having to do a bit of storyboard work at the end of the day. But the majority of the day was exactly how he wanted to spend it. We finished the day with a beautiful walk up the canal with Owen. I said it before and I'll say it again, Nuno is a loving dad and husband. We are so lucky to have him in our lives.