Vanilla Coconut Ice Cream - Vegan, Soy-Free, Gluten-Free

Basic Vanilla Coconut Ice Cream (Vegan, Soy-Free, Gluten-Free)

This fantastic ice cream recipe was adapted from How Cooking Works by blogger "Needleroozer"Yield: 1.5 quarts Ingredients: 4 cups coconut milk (full fat) 3/4 cup granulated sugar pinch of salt 1 TBSP vanilla extract 1/2 vanilla bean, slit lengthwise, and scraped* (optional) Directions: Stir the coconut milk and sugar together until the sugar is dissolved. Add the salt and vanilla and freeze in an electric or hand operated ice cream freezer. *throw all of your scraped beans into a jar, and fill it with sugar. Vanilla sugar is wonderful to bake/cook with. Variations: For more of a coconut flavor, lessen the vanilla or leave out the bean, and add some coconut. For orange sherbet, instead of vanilla, add 1 TBSP of orangel oil, and some orange zest. If you make a batch of this, and a batch of vanilla, you have the makings for a Creamsickle! THe kids love this combo. You could also use lemon oil and zest, throw in berries, etc. Taken from http://www.godairyfree.org/Recipes/Dairy-Free-Desserts/Basic-Vanilla-Coconut-Ice-Cream-Vegan-Soy-Free-Gluten-Free.html

Making Your Own Stock

Vegetable Stock

2 cups onion

1 cup celery

1 cup carrots

6 cups cold water

Cheesecloth  (found in the craft area at Wal-mart)

5 stems from fresh Italian parsley

8 peppercorns

1 garlic clove

¼ tsp thyme

1 bay leaf

1. Rough chop onion, celery and carrots about ¼ inch pieces.   No need to peal the onion and carrots.  Just remove any bad spots.  Also, you can use the leafy parts of the celery.  Place in stock pot and cover with cold water.
2. Make a spice sachet by cutting a piece of cheesecloth about 1 foot long.  Don’t unfold the cloth.  Cut the parsley stems to about ¼ inch pieces. Crush the peppercorns. (If you have a large chef knife, lay the knife flat on the peppercorns facing away from you and hit it with your hand. If you do not have a chef knife, place the peppercorns in a plastic bag and use a mallet).  Crush the bay leaf and the garlic clove.  Place all spices in the center of the cheesecloth and tie together by pulling up the opposite corners or use twine.
3. Place the sachet in the water with the vegetables and simmer covered for about 2 hours.  Do not stir, if you do it will become cloudy.  Make sure the water covers all the vegetables.  If not, add more water.  When done simmering, remove all the vegetables and sachet from the water.  Strain the stock through cheesecloth and cool. 
4. You can freeze the stock in ice trays or 1 cup containers and keep in baggies for easy use in all your soups.  This recipe does not have any salt so it will appear to be bland but you can control the sodium better when you use a salt free stock. 

• If you would like to make a chicken stock, remove the meat from uncooked chicken and use the bones in the stock. You will need more water to cover the chicken bones and cook for 6 to 8 hours on simmer (overnight is good). Make sure the water is cold and you do not boil when starting otherwise you will leach the impurities out of the bones and get a cloudy stock.
• To make a beef stock, take a couple pounds of beef bones (can get from your butcher) and brown the bones by baking in the oven for 1 hour on 350 degrees. After one hour, take the vegetables (onion, celery and carrots) and mix one can of tomato paste with them then bake for an additional 30 min.  After bones and veggies are browned, add to stockpot with cold water along with spices and bring to a gentle simmer for 8-10 hours.  
• For each type of stock, make sure to strain through the cheesecloth and cool as quickly as you can.  Best way is to put in large container or another stockpot and place in an ice bath in your sink. Bring down to at least room temp before putting the stock in the fridge or freezer. If you place directly in your fridge or freezer, it will bring the temp up for all the rest of your food and may cause spoilage.   

Enjoy.

No No's Cafe'

Sunday February 13, 2011 visited NoNo's Cafe'

http://www.nonoscafe.com/

Atmosphere 5

Cleanliness 5

Food 3

Prices 3.5

Service 2.5

Overall 3 out of 5

NoNo's cafe has a very fun Atmosphere that makes you feel like you are in a nice Cajun restaurant in the middle of Louisiana.  It was clean and extremely busy on the day of our visit.  They have a really unique menu of Cajun and Creole food and the prices were fair ($8 to $15) considering they have a niche that is very limited in the Denver area.  They have a rotating menu that changes each week and specials depending on the day that you go. It was tough to choose what to have because they gave us 3 different menus to choose from.

Being the day before Valentines day I called the restaurant to find out if there would be a wait.  A man answered the phone and said "NoNo's hold please" and placed me on hold without even listening for a response.  When he came back to the phone he was a little more pleasant.  I asked if there was a wait and he said 25 minutes so we had him take our name and made our way there.

When we got there we still had about 8 minutes to wait but went in to let them know we had arrived.  There was nobody at the front desk to greet us and we waited about 3 minutes without being greeted by anyone.  It appeared that the same person at the front desk was the same person that answered the phone, probably the manager or owner.  It was another few minutes before he was ready to talk to us because there were two parties before us.  When our name was called it was the time they said it would be so they get a plus for this portion of the service meter, however, after he called our names, he was not really ready for us.  He took his time marking us off and talked with another party not giving us any attention for another few minutes.

 

The owner/manager was trying to do everything and in doing so was not doing anything well.  While we were there he was the only one that answered the phones, took names at the front counter, sat people in their seats and then we even saw him busing tables even though he had a young boy exclusively doing it along with many people there already available to bus the tables.  I would highly suggest that he have a really friendly hostess come on the scene to help make the patrons feel more welcome when entering the establishment.

After being seated we noticed that some tables were given cloth napkins and others were given paper napkins.  One would assume that maybe they had run out of the cloth so had to switch to the paper because of the busy Valentines weekend but that was not the case because parties after us received the cloth.  Kind of made you feel like he thought you were a little less important.  Not a good service move.

The waitress was very nice and attentive to us.  She was knowledgeable and quick, however not sure how well she was trained in certain areas.  When we paid our bill, she charged us the incorrect amount (way less then the bill) and when we pointed it out to her, instead of reversing the charges on the credit card, she just did a 2nd charge for the difference. 

We ordered the Po-Boy Shrimp sandwich and the Breakfast in Bread meal.  The Po-Boy was just OK.  The breading on the shrimp did not stick to the shrimp and did not carry much flavor.  The sauces on the side were good and helped to add some flavor to the sandwich.  The Breakfast in Bread was supposed to be served in a bread bowl but the waitress informed us that they were out of bread bowls and that it would be served on a slice of bread instead.  The meal came heaped on Texas toast that was hard to cut into and again the food was OK.  The gravy had a noticable amount of grease floating on top and was a very large portion and the over easy egg was cooked just right.  I am sure that it looked much messier not being in the bread bowl. 

If you are looking for a unique place or are just in the mood for some good ole Cajun food, this is the place to go. If you are looking for great food and really great service, you may want to try another place like Gumbos in Downtown Denver off 16th Street Mall.