Babies. That's my excuse. Sorry. Always with the best laid plans and intentions, but then the need for sleep or a bit of video games or having friends over for gaming and and and... yeah.
But now I have a story to write down, and the time spent being a moo cow in which to actually compose it, so here we are!
All growing up, my mom would make raspberry frozen yogurt in the summers. D-I-V-I-N-E. I'd demand that she make double batches and, let's be honest, I'd eat almost all of it myself. In very few seatings. I'd pull one of the many containers out of the freezer and just go to town with a spoon. During undergrad I'd straight up steal multiple containers out of my parents' house. "No idea how you guys went through the frozen yogurt so fast. Do not look in the freezer at my apartment. Kthxbai."
Somewhere around grad school, she stopped making it so regularly... the old ice cream maker finally gave up the ghost, she moved house, physical/mental decline the last couple years: everything conspired against me and the frozen yogurt of my youth.
But Jeff gave me an ice cream maker for Christmas, and I was determined to get the frozen yogurt recipe into my recipe stash. Went over to Mom's house and started flipping through her recipe box, searching for the hazily-remembered Xerox of a Sunset magazine page.
No dice.
Hey Mama, where's that frozen yogurt recipe?
The Sunset magazine one? The raspberry?
Yeah, my favorite. I can't find the clipping in here.
... It should be in there. It's really not?
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Cue more frantic searching. Maybe it fell out in the cupboard. Maybe mom's PA will find it when she's cleaning, if I ask her to look for it. Maybe it's at Dad's house.
No luck over a few weeks. I had a sad. Mama had most of the components in memory, but wasn't sure on some of the amounts, or ordering of steps. Life pro tip here: even if you don't have an ice cream maker or whatever other accoutrements are required for your favorite childhood recipes... GET THOSE RECIPES IN YOUR HANDS.
On our weekly farmer's market run a couple weeks back, the ice cream vendor had a raspberry sorbet that was so similar in mouthfeel, if not in exact flavor, that I came home With A Quest. Surely, I thought, surely, the recipe existed on the internet.
Many nights of Googling later, I threw my hands up in disgust. Nothing. Not even recipes that were similar enough for me to feel confident in adapting (my ice-cream-fu is not strong). Sunset magazine has online archives back to the late '90s, but this recipe was far older than that. I was this > < close to heading into a library to, I dunno, try to find it on microfiche or something.
Then, of all things... an Etsy listing popped into my search results.
Sunset Magazine August 1977, Frozen Yogurt, Oregon lava beds, whiteflies, ground covers, ceramic tile, tomatillo recipes, greenhouse. $10.
And DAT COVER.
The listing didn't have a picture of the frozen yogurt page, but that had to be it. Right magazine, right timeframe for my mom to have clipped it out just before I was born, right-looking end product picture. $10 + shipping: totally worth it to me. Why was this on Etsy of all places? Who knows! Random lady down in California, YOU CAN HAVE MY MONEY.
Package arrived tonight. I held my breath as I opened it up and flipped to the recipe. Like... it had to be the right one, but what if it wasn't, oh my god, I will seriously lose it.
I lost it, indeed... In the form of a kitchen dance of Ultimate I Win At The Intersection Of Internet And Dead Tree Media Victory. RASPBERRY FROZEN YOGURT YOU WILL BE MINE!
I know what we're doing this weeeeeeeeeeeeeekend!
* * *
Side note, operation The Boys Share a Room commenced on the 4th of July weekend and it has gone swimmingly. Dominic mostly sleeps through Toby waking to nom; Toby generally only wakes 2-3 times a night instead of the 4-5 Dom did at the same age, which makes things a lot easier than they could be. Some mornings they both sleep until we wake them up at 7:15 to get ready for daycare, and it's adorable how Dominic yells "good morning Toby!" and Toby giggles back at him. We disassembled and gave away the co-sleeper this week and I was surprisingly emotional about it. Go figure.