Summer Pleasures

One of my favorite childhood summertime pastimes was playing in the laundry. My mother had a clothes line that folded out like an umbrella and in the summertime all the laundry went outside to air dry. The laundry load with the highest play value was sheets. On a hot summer day I would play house inside the cool, shady walls of the damp sheets hung out to dry.

For years after we bought our own house I wished for an umbrella-style clothes line. My husband had issues with it, though. I believe he thought a clothes line looked a bit ghetto. After about 15 years, my mother-in-law figured out that my husband wasn't going to get me one, so she bought me one and I love it.

It makes me happy to hang out my laundry. I feel like I'm cheating a bit, like I'm getting away with something. I get my clothes dry and don't have to pay for the electricity to dry them. Shhhh, don't tell! Plus, no fabric softener on earth can make sheets smell as delicious as drying them in the warm sun.

It's such a great feeling to find something so easy and so satisfying. Making raspberry sherbet is like that, too. I picked raspberries from my neighbor's yard, threw them into a blender with milk and sugar, poured that into my ice cream freezer and had fabulous sherbet, bursting with fresh raspberry taste in 20 minutes! Life is rarely this simple and pleasing, so intend to make the most of it while it is.



Raspberry Sherbet
- adapted from The Perfect Scoop by David Lebovitz

4 cups raspberries
2 cups whole milk
1 cup sugar
1-1/2 tsp freshly squeezed lemon juice

Put the raspberries, milk, and sugar in a blender. Puree until smooth, then strain the mixture through a coarse sieve to remove the seeds. Stir in the lemon juice.

Freezer right away to preserve the beautiful taste and color of the raspberries. Follow the instructions for your ice cream maker to freeze. (Mine was quite soft when the freezing time was done, so I put it into the freezer to harden up.)