Pumpkin pecan praline ice cream

La Gringa's pumpkin pecan praline ice cream

Yum! This was a good experiment with a holiday flare. El Jefe liked it a lot, too.

I followed my basic mango ice cream recipe except substituted a can of pumpkin puree for the mango, reduced the milk a little to adjust for the volume of puree, and added some cinnamon and pumpkin pie spice.

Next time, I think I will leave out the pumpkin pie spice and just use about 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon. Initially, I only used half the can of pumpkin, but the pumpkin flavor was too faint, so I dumped the whole thing into the mix.

Pecans cost an arm and a leg here in La Ceiba so they are a special treat for us. I'm not giving the praline recipe for reasons explained below, but the next time that I get it to work, I will give you a recipe.

I cannot follow a praline or toffee recipe to save my life! I don't know why I always feel the need to adjust by adding butter or more corn syrup. It always tastes good, but this praline turned out incredibly sticky. I joked that it has the advantage of giving you a snack later on from all the praline stuck to your teeth. ;-/ Luckily, mixed into the frozen ice cream, it was delectably crunchy and not too sticky.

After the praline hardens, chop it into small pieces using a sharp chef's knife. You can store it in a plastic container at room temperature or in the freezer. I store mine in the back of the freezer because otherwise it just dwindles away day by day until there is nothing left. (El Jefe rarely looks in the freezer.)

This ice cream is great by itself, but since it isn't too terribly sweet, I think it would be good as a side to your pumpkin or pecan pie, too.

Let me know what you think if you try it!


If you are going to try this recipe in the tropics (or even if you aren't in the tropics), please check out my Ice Cream Making Tips, which I know from my years of ice cream making experience will help to avoid disappointment. If you are still on the fence about buying an ice cream maker — just do it! Check out my Ice Cream Maker Reviews where I give the straight scoop on ice cream makers.

Oh, yeah, and for the raw egg-phobics, you can easily change this recipe to a cooked egg custard based recipe by following the instructions in Custard Based Ice Cream.

Enjoy!

Green oranges

Green oranges

A friend who raises oranges gave El Jefe a 'few'. What might not be clear by this photo is that this container holds close to 5 gallons. And that wasn't all of them. Arexy had already made about a half-gallon of juice and had prepared the oranges in the container below for 'sucking'.

This is the typical Honduran way of consuming oranges. They are peeled and then cut in half to hold in the hand to suck the juice out of them. Oranges are peeled so that the bitter skin doesn't leave a bad taste on the lips. When you buy one on the street, the vendor will peel it for you.

We gave a huge bag of oranges to Arexy and another one to my sister-in-law, and still had oranges for about two weeks.

Though they are green, not like you would see in US grocery stores, these oranges are bright orange inside, ripe, sweet, and juicy. Very sweet and juicy!

To understand why your oranges are orange and ours are green, please see Why are oranges orange?

Guest response to: The falling US dollar and Lempira

The following guest blog is by Jorge Gallardo Ruis in response to Guest Blog: The falling US dollar and Lempira.


The unknown author also forgets that most of the imported articles we purchase come from the US. When the dollar rises and falls, it does so with respect to other currencies that are not very common in Honduras: The Euro, the British pound, the Yen and most recently, the Chinese currency.

Thus, inflation is affected very little when the dollar rises and falls, or at least, we're affected the least, compared to the idea that the Lempira fell against the dollar. That would promote our exports to the US (our greatest market) but push inflation as the prices rise on consumer goods imported from the US, as the author says, and that would affect us much more than "riding" the dollar up and down against the other currencies. In this sense we are still living by the dollar standard as we were in the 60s, except the ratio has changed.

What the author recommends: "About the only way to keep up the living standard is have a more efficient economy and trying to reduce the import of oil and a lot of food items and became more self sufficient in energy." was called in the 60s "Import substitution" and would have worked well, as it did in the Asian Tigers, except that's when we had the real coups which were a means for a few to mass accumulate the wealth. General Oswaldo Lopez Arellano became one of the wealthiest men in Honduras together with a clique of generals and servants, while they beat up on students.

I would say Import Substitution is still the current policy, with the biggest import, oil, as its primary target. That is why those recent Honduran contracts for renewable energy were so important.

The stability of the Lempira with respect to the dollar is maintained, not quite by manipulation which sounds kind of nasty, but by a series of macro-economic mechanisms which include primarily the open market where dollars are made available to big traders (the banks as intermediaries and big projects), but also include the interest rates to try to attract foreign capital. The problem was that the interest rate had created accumulation of funds but there were no big projects to invest in, circling back to the renewable energy projects, which Zelaya was holding back. His only investment project was "la cuarta urna" as we all know.

But these projects will not create as many jobs as manufacturing and infrastructure would. Appreciating the Lempira with respect to the dollar, as the author recommends would, yes, reduce inflation which is small, but would also affect our manufacturing exports by making them more expensive in the US. So, appreciating the Lempira would hurt the slow recovery we are having in industrial production and affect adversely job creation, a current priority.

I would say that riding the dollar while the dollar is depreciating should force us to look for new markets for manufacture and tourism in Europe and Asia where we're becoming cheaper to buy from and visit.

Many thanks go to Jorge Gallardo for allowing me to post this article. You can find other Blogicito guest articles by Sr. Gallardo here.

Jorge Gallardo Rius is a Honduran citizen who was born in La Ceiba and currently lives in Tegucigalpa. He studied in Louisiana, Houston, and Romania and is currently an Information Systems Analyst. Jorge's mother was a US citizen so he grew up speaking both languages at home. For a time, he wrote a weekly column on Education and Technology for an English-language weekly newspaper. He offers English/Spanish and Spanish/English translations. Sr. Gallardo can be contacted at jgallardo515 at yahoo.com

Your comments on this article are welcomed.