Sun, June 15 - Father's Day, limoncello sorbet

12.39pm - apple juice on the drive down to the O.C., with Ritesh.13.07h - egg roll and half a spring roll at Zen Vegetarian Restaurant, first course of a family-style Father's Day feast courtesy of Prashant (thanks, Prashant!) w/ Ritesh's parents, Prashant and Suzanne, Vijay, and of course Ritesh.
As an aside, it struck me today - and I'm probably the last person in the world to notice this - that purple basil is only purple on one side; see proof on picture:

13.10h - pickled sweet papaya

13.14h - my avocado smoothie

13.18h - veggie tofu soup

13.29h - veggie beef soup (yes, that's fake beef - looks just like the real thing and tastes better, if you ask me. Did I mention I'm a wimp when it comes to red meat?)

13.35h - kung pao tofu, sweet & sour tofu and fake sizzling beef

15.04h - dessert at the in-laws' house, still w/ the whole family: Marie Callender's streusel apple pie w/ two kinds of ice cream: vanilla, and roasted banana & brandy. Shared this piece w/ Ritesh.

18.28h - back home, Chinese puff pastry w/ black sesame cream, from the bakery inside the Chinese supermarket in Artesia where we picked up another case of mangoes. God knows why they don't sell mangoes at the farmers market. If they can grow mangoes in Florida, why not here?

19.55h - Nady bread caprese, at home, shared with Ritesh.

20.02h - some home made limoncello sorbet, made using over half a bottle of the real stuff (they're small bottles, mind you). And just for the record, freezing alcohol is no walk in the park. Our ice cream maker of course failed at it in spite of a solid half hour of churning so I returned the liquid limoncello-syrup mix to the pot and boiled off some of the alcohol. Not all of it, though - the trick being to get it to freeze without sacrificing too much. The ice cream maker gave it another good try after that and produced a somewhat slushy mix which I would have happily slurped down. But Ritesh would have none of it and sprung into action the old-fashioned way: poured it in a wide, flat dish, put it in the freezer, and then scraped the frozen top layer off with a fork every hour or so. And what I haven't told you yet is that all this happened yesterday! This was supposed to be last night's dessert, perfect after the baked pasta. Ha! Instead, this capricious liqueur took all night to settle down into some sort of freeze and poor Ritesh scraped away last thing last night, first thing this morning, last thing before we left for lunch, first thing when we came back. You've got to give it him, he's nothing if not persistent. I just get credit for the idea, and for taking a picture in the seconds before it started to melt...

20.18h - chestnut cake from the Chinese bakery, shared w/ Ritesh.