Thursday, July 14, 2011

Christmas in July?

Caneel Bay Resort

With a cross-Canada move coming up for us in a matter of mere weeks, it's time here at The Do-tique to begin the process of de-cluttering and de-provisioning. Estimates coming in on the moving costs are suggesting that the cost of moving will work out to about $1 per pound of stuff. That means that unless something is literally worth its weight in gold, it has to be let go. That also goes for all the provisions and dry goods around the house - which I'd naturally re-stocked mid-spring unaware that we'd be moving so soon.

This all brings me to the topic of Christmas in July...How do you use up Christmas-like ingredients in the middle of the summer?

I had a can of pumpkin filling in the pantry and a tonne of oatmeal - They became delicious breakfast granola for a week or two. We also had a small turkey that we bought on sale right after the holidays that turned itself into a BBQ feast - quartered the bird, brined it for a day and grilled it with homemade BBQ sauce - better than Thanksgiving! Finally, I found a package of gingerbread cookie dough that I'd stashed away in the freezer and thought it would work pretty well as a base for ice-cream sandwiches.

My methodology here was to take the same approach as if I were using brownies and bake the gingerbread as large squares.




Fill them with ice cream, freeze the whole lot and then cut them into smaller bars with a hot knife:



The results were amazing and the sandwiches got better after a few days once the gingerbread spices had begun to flavor the vanilla ice cream. Interestingly, Chatelaine stole my idea for the cover of their August  issue! 

Photo by James Tse via www.chatelaine.com

Here's the link to the Chatelaine recipe.

DIY Rating: 10

Yes, go, NOW and de-stock that freezer 
and pantry before the end of summer! 

You have some crazy tasty stuff in there waiting 
for you if you get creative about it!

Overall, all three of these options were easy to make 
and helped stretch the grocery budget a tiny bit.