Shaved Ice
Geez, has it been close to a month? Oh my, HOG’s business picked up all of a sudden and yours truly has been on the road a lot lately going to events, picking up fish and mopping floors. What a great life!
So anyway… the story takes us to the Sacramento delta. Our friend Dava invited us up to her parent’s house for a weekend of camping and go cart racing. Serious teeth chattering fun! We all had a blast that weekend trying to ram each other off the track, pitching our tents in the grass and grilling our meals under the stars.
If any of you know the geography you’ll know that it gets pretty darn hot in that part of the world, and that particular weekend was no exception. It was 104 degrees on Saturday and hotter on Sunday. On the last day we all decided that it would be fun to check out the Galt strawberry festival. It’s kind of funny; I equate the standard community festival to a shopping mall; kind of predictable as to what you’ll find. If it’s not a Victoria’s Secret or Sbarro, it’s a hoop game, dunk the dude in the water tank, funnel cake or shaved ice booth.
Since it was over 104 degrees we decided to forego the fried food and sample the shaved ice. Molly, pictured here, tried the strawberry flavor and I ordered the mango. They were fun to eat but really really sweet! I got to thinking about it and did some research on shaved ice. I wanted to see if there was a way to make syrup that was simple fruit and less sugar. The ones you typically get are flavored with a thick sugary artificial syrup with coloring. I stumbled onto a recipe for Italian ice that sounded more up my alley. I also found that Hawaiian shaved ice is almost always done with artificial syrups and Italian is done with fresh fruit bases. The solution is to do a hybrid ice. You can buy an inexpensive shaved ice machine and make your own syrup. Click on the links to find the machines and recipe.
Shaved Ice Recipes & Shaved Ice Machine
Keep cool this summer!
Chef Stephen shouting out from Hands On Gourmet
Awesome post and photos. I really want some shaved ice to numb my stupid mouth now! I’m having trouble sending this comment through because I can’t view the captcha image.
Re comment: I only know about Southern BC (BC is a huge Provence) It’s almost summer fruit fest right now. I can’t wait! I refuse to eat imported fruits that we have in abundance here (although only for a short time) We have the most gorgeous local berries (blueberries, blackberries, raspberries), as well as cherries, nectarines, peaches etc. Corn too, and hazelnuts
Also, it was just spot prawn season. Huge, juicy prawns that I prefer to eat the body raw and deepfry the heads and eat those whole.
Halibut is also in abundance right now. Salmon season is approaching I think. We love our salmon here. I only eat that raw though.
Comment by Mel @ bouchonfor2.com — June 19, 2009 @ 6:55 pm
No matter how much more “refined” my food tastes get, I still miss the little Snoopy Snow Cone machine my friends and I had as kids. We love spinning that thing around and pouring the blue syrup on it.
Comment by EB — June 29, 2009 @ 1:16 pm