aprico-riffic

A quick unscientific Google search for apricot, and then apricot with other words that I associate with apricots reveals what I’ve come to believe. Apricots are completely underrated. America has very little love for the apricot. This may have something to do with the fact that everyone shops at supermarkets here, and supermarket apricots really don’t deserve to be called apricots.

For my first birthday my great aunt and uncle gave me an apricot tree, at the same time they gave my dad 24 years (and counting) of yard work. He’s not much of a gardener, but he’s learned to take pride in that tree, probably because I have never tasted a better apricot produced elsewhere. Unfortunately this year all the storms took all the blossoms off my tree, and we had a grand total of 3 apricots this year. This threw me into a depression for a while. It’s not really summer in my house unless there are more apricots than there is room to keep them. And if we don’t have at least 4 pies in the freezer, in addition to the ones we’ve eaten fresh, it’s a bad year. And don’t get me started about the fantastic jelly my grandma makes, and with very little added sugar, because the apricots are so good.

But things started to look up. My grandma’s neighbor invited us to pick some apricots off his tree, and they were almost as good as mine. But, I thought it was rude to pick a ton of apricots from some stranger’s tree, so I only got enough for eating. Then I went to the farmers market yesterday. They had beautifully orange, ripe apricots for $1.25/lb ( vs $4/lb for super crappy grocery store apricots). And lots of them. My co-worker probably thought I was crazy. I picked up like 4lbs. There was going to be pie and ice cream in my future. My summer was saved. This guy better come back next week, I need to buy some for jelly. They weren’t quite like homegrown, but they were still very good.

So last night I made a pie, I put in a bit less sugar than the recipe called for (usually we used a considerable amount less). And it turned out delicious. While my hands were slimy from cutting apricots I also made the recipe for apricot ice cream. This recipe requires a strange amount of refrigeration, so I mixed the ingredients, and it’s waiting to be run through the ice cream maker when I get home. I tasted it though, and I can see how it just may be the best ice cream ever.

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I put safeway select blue soda in the ice cream maker this weekend. It was fine, but it was no Icee. I don’t know if it was because the soda was slightly flatter than it should have been. Or if maybe the Icee is just magical. They say the Icee was inadvertently invented when some drug store owner put his coke bottles in a fridge that was too cold. But, I’m sure, since then the process has changed a bit.