The perfect pair

When I go out to eat, I think of it as a treat -- and inspiration.

After getting the ice cream maker, I was finding it hard to decide what flavor to make first. Then I remembered my deep love of the cardamom gelato at Naia. Over the last year, whenever I have gone in there though, there has been no cardamom. What the hell? Get me hooked on the stuff and then yank it away? So not right. Once that thought entered my brain, there was no turning back.

I have always been partial to custard based ice creams. So I found this recipe and decided that all it needed was some cardamom. I added about two teaspoons. But something else was missing.

Whenever I bought the cardamom gelato, it was usually after buying the carrot walnut cake at Poulet. Guess what? During most of my trips into Poulet over recent months, there has been no carrot cake in sight. This needed to be rectified. If I was going to make cardamom gelato, then I was going to need carrot cake as well. And then I found this twist on the standard. (I also added some walnuts. Because the cake at Poulet has walnuts.) Hmmmm. I use cardamom and ginger together when I cook Indian food so the addition of the ginger in the frosting should be OK. It was more than OK. Sure I don't want to marry it like the pork from Gregoire but I could at least date it.

And thank goodness I really like my conditioning class. If I keep eating like this, I'm thinking that next term I will have to sign up for two hour blocks instead of the one hour block I do right now.

(I also booked my first real vacation in years yesterday. Woohoo!)