Sorry, not rheumatoid arthritis. Just me.

Hello, long weekend.
Where have you been, exactly?
It’s been a while.

JG’s back at school,
Although not with students yet,
But the week was long.

Tomorrow, JG’s
Volleyball team is playing
In a tournament

At his old high school,
And he’ll coach in the same gym
Where he played. So strange.

We have a long ride.
The bus leaves at 5:15!
In the morning! Gah.

Wake-up call’s at 4,
But as sleepy as I’ll be,
I’ll be a great fan.

I made some cookies
For the girls, but they’re so flat.
Sigh. Still tasty, though.

I hope they play well,
The season starts out nicely,
And JG is pleased.

But then, Labor Day!
It’s the last day off I’ll take
Before Thanksgiving.

Maybe I’ll sleep in
And catch up on some reading.
Yes, that sounds lovely.

It’s the eighth, last week of Whip It Up!  The final wrap-up post will go live on Sunday, where we will reveal the last batch of recipes, the lucky winner of the prize drawing, and — of course! — fascinating facts and figures from two months of testing new dishes.  Oh, there will be graphs.

For this last theme of dessert, I chose Nutella ice cream, which I first spied depicted in comic-book form by Adam Roberts, The Amateur Gourmet, who found it at Chocolate and Zucchini.  Whew!  It’s like food-blog Telephone/Whisper Down the Alley.  When I found Adam’s post months ago, I sent the link to JG, and he responded, “Awesome.”

Method
This recipe is ridiculously easy.  Two ingredients, just a few steps, and ice cream as a reward for patience.  Although it calls for an ice cream machine, it’s possible to create this dessert without one. I made the ice cream on the same night that I prepped a slow cooker of beef burrito filling for the next day, made a black bean salad, and cooked chili mac for dinner, and that is not at all a testament to my multitasking skill, which seems to view the kitchen as a Do Not Enter zone.  This ice cream is really that simple.

I estimated that one jar of Nutella would be enough for the recipe, but it came up short in my plunger measuring cup, so I added some peanut butter, per one of the original commenters.  As is my unfortunate custom, I used a bowl that was just large enough to hold the ingredients, but not to mix them, so it was a slow whisking process, indeed.  Nevertheless, the hardest part was pouring the chilled mixture into the small mouth of the ice cream machine, and that is something I will not do on my own again.  I am not that coordinated, and I need to accept that.

Taste
The ice cream firmed up in the freezer overnight, and I scooped out a portion for JG last night.  I should clarify that, at our house, we have RA- and JG-size ice cream portions, where JG’s portions are roughly three times the size of mine. When friends come over, they know which size to request, although I’ve noticed that people generally lean toward the RA-size helping.  In any case, I scooped out a JG-size dish of ice cream and tossed in some pretzels, since we love pretzels in Nutella.  In JG’s words, the ice cream was delicious, awesome, rich, and heavy.  In fact, he thinks he should have gone with an RA-size bowl.  How about that?  I took a small taste, and it just about knocked me over.  The hazelnut flavor was very pronounced, and the texture was fantastic, but it was insanely heavy.

Repeat appearance
I think I would make this ice cream again, but I would not top off the jar of Nutella with any peanut butter, and  I might add more evaporated milk to thin out the mixture.  The idea of Nutella-based ice cream is great, but since the spread itself is so thick and rich, the resulting ice cream packs a punch.  I would probably prefer a vanilla-Nutella swirl with hazelnut chunks, but that is certainly more work than this two-ingredient shortcut.  I’d recommend making this ice cream, but a shot glass might be a more appropriate serving vessel than a JG-size bowl.

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I dream in first person. I don’t watch myself; I am in my body. My pulse quickens when I am fleeing, and I gasp aloud when I’m afraid.

Last night, I dreamed that JG and I were arguing about something maybe related to decor, but it all came back to money. The cold timbre of our voices, the stony silence, and that familiar tightening in my chest were eerily vivid. Eventually, JG had had enough, and he walked away in disgust. I was so angry that I picked up the closest thing to me to hurl it into the wall, but it was just a wad of plastic bags, and I flailed in my efforts to send it crashing. Immediately, I was ashamed of myself, and I let out a barbaric yawp of frustration. And I heard myself heaving deep sighs of unrest and slapping the mattress as I thrashed into wakefulness.

JG whispered, “Are you okay?”

I lingered in the fog. No, I’m not okay.

Later, I told him how I dreamed that we fought. “But we didn’t in real life,” he said. I know, but the foreboding and frustration are deep inside my bones as though we had.

I’ve been trucking my way through Couch to 5K with the calm sense of accomplishment I can only derive from having a strictly delineated itinerary. At first, I could barely jog for two minutes without huffing and puffing, but over the weekend, I pushed through a twenty-minute stretch and, lo, I did not die. Hooray! Sure, my face was beet-red, sweat was streaming down my face, and I would have promised my hypothetical first-born child to the inventor of a full-body deodorant, but I did it. I ran for a longer stretch than I ever had before, and I even managed to sprint for the last minute. My “sprint” was more like hauling my sorry carcass up that last hill with every ounce of strength I had, pumping my arms as fast as they possibly could go, but I say that counts. I covered 2.5 miles between my five-minute warm-up walk and the twenty-minute jog! The wobbly legs and Lamaze breathing I sported on the way home were a small price to pay for the glowing satisfaction.

With my schedule of repeating each week’s workouts for two weeks, I calculated that I’d finish around the end of October. I could take advantage of fall weather with half-hour jogs every other day while I researched treadmill workouts for the winter. No problem. Good for me, right? Yes. Here’s a pat on the back, self!

We received a flier in the mail for the annual Mushroom Festival, and JG informed me that there would be a 5K run/walk during the event, you know, in case I was interested. My brain immediately threw itself a whirlwind. What if I was awful? What if I was the only obvious amateur? What if people got annoyed at my belabored breathing after one mile? What if the walkers overtook me? Besides, that race was on September 7, way before I was scheduled to have the requisite endurance. This race was not on the itinerary!

Oh, but it was only fifteen bucks to register, and there was a free t-shirt in the deal. What the heck? I sent in my registration, wincing all the way.

As if I couldn’t get any more nervous, my parents confirmed that they are coming down that weekend to go to the festival, and by extension, witness my first 5K. I figured that they’d join JG in the cheering section, and my dad would take pictures of me looking terrible and sweaty at the finish line. Uh, right. My dad, the half-marathon-training, Runner’s World-receiving, sneaker-collecting distance runner was going to simply observe? No way, man.

I received a e-mail this morning in my dad’s brief style:

RA - I am interested in the 5K. What pace are you planning to run?

DAD

I responded:

HA. I believe the technical term is “as slowly as possible so that I can run the whole time.” If I don’t stop to walk, I’ll be happy, so don’t feel the need to run with me!

That is, please don’t run with me! So help me, I am running a 5K at a festival for fungi in less than two weeks with my dad for a free t-shirt. Unbelievable.