Red tape

I had a mildly amusing experience with red tape earlier today.

My father's trust company emailed me, asking me to get in touch with his IRA company to make sure he gets the minimum annual distribution for the year. So I called the IRA company and asked them to pull their magic. They emailed me some forms to fill out, and included in their email the contact info for the person I was dealing with, so that I could get the forms back to him.

Both these companies are in Boston.

Not only that, but it turns out they're in the same building.

I'm in California.

This makes sense how????

(Yes, I know, they need someone with POA to instruct the IRA company, the trust company people can't just walk upstairs and bug the IRA company themselves. But still.)

[reposted from G+]

Lemon-Basil Sorbet

I was given a spiffy new electric ice cream maker for my birthday back in October, with the (joking) condition that I use it to make a sorbet or two for the family gathering at Christmastime. (There are a couple of people who have dairy allergies, so ice cream, ice milk, and frozen yogurt are right out.) So I'm trying out recipes.

( Lemon-Basil sorbet: recipe and notes )

Chocolate sorbet

Last night I put together the basic recipe for chocolate sorbet at epicurious.com. Preparing the recipe is ridiculously easy, though you end up with a lot of dirty dishes at the end of it. After blending the final mix, I left the mixture in the blender and stuck it in the fridge overnight. As the recipe warned, it didn't seem terribly liquidy this morning, but stirring it up with a fork produced a potentially useful stopping place: chocolate syrup! If you make this recipe with chocolate that doesn't have any milkfat in it, it's vegan- and allergic-to-milk- friendly. And given that it's (in my case) Ghirardelli cocoa powder plus Ghirardelli 60% bittersweet chocolate, plus some water and sugar and a little salt and vanilla, it's really tasty.

The stuff seemed to freeze pretty well, perhaps unsurprisingly; chocolate likes to solidify when it's cold, after all. (Note to self: if the opening of the container you plan to store the ice cream or sorbet in isn't all that big, knock the sorbet off of the paddle while holding the paddle over the freezing cylinder, not the final storage container. Otherwise you have a mess to contend with!) A small taste indicates that the final chocolate sorbet product is of reasonable smoothness and very chocolatey - what's not to like in the list of ingredients?

We'll do this again at Christmas for my husband's family, using a brand like theo or Scharffenberger that doesn't have any milkfat in it.