Triple Berry Sorbet

Have you ever come home from a vacation, plop right down on your own bed, and declare you need another vacation? Happens to us all the time. No matter how lovely or relaxing our vacations are intended to be, they always turn out a bit more than what we've asked for. Take our latest excursion as an example: Mr. C and I had planning a week long camping trip which took us along HWY 101 and ended up with an extreme heart-to-heart with Mt. St. Helens. Sounds amazing? Oh, it was. The weather held up beautifully (or as well as it can hold up on the Oregon Coast). We biked along the board walk, went dune buggying, and enjoyed time off the beaten path.

By the end of the week, however, things began to get a bit hairy. We're in to the pretty primitive form of camping (you RVers sicken me), but going without a shower for that long a stretch was pretty horrifying. Hiking between St. Helen's dome and Spirit Lake seemed like a good idea at the time, but, 12 miles and five hours later, we were dehydrated and sunburned messes. The drive home was a calm blessing. Except when I discovered a mouse had  made our tiny blue car it's new home (Note: I discovered this while speeding along HWY 7. Pretty dangerous, little mousey). It was not too happy when I tried to put it in a tupperware container, so it decided to punish us by running up into the front dashboard. Mr. C thought it would be best if we ran the heater vents and try to blow out little Fifle from it's fortress. Well, it worked out - if by "blow out" we really mean "chopped up into bits". Ew.

At least the doggy had fun?

So, a week and a $100 mouse-extraction later, we're back home. Thank god there was a pint of our homemade triple berry sorbet waiting for me. I needed some serious decompression time that only a sugary treat could provide. And also a shower.

Just like our homemade ice cream, you can make our sorbet without an ice cream machine. This sorbet will not be as smooth as something you may get from a container in your grocery store, but we both rather enjoyed the rustic texture.






Triple Berry Sorbet

2 cup water
1 1/2 cup sugar
4 cup mixed berries (I used the blueberries, blackberries, and raspberries that we had picked earlier)
1/4 cup lemon juice

1) Puree your berries in a blender, then strain the juice and discard the seeds (I warn you this is a long and messy process, so don't worry too much about getting out all of the seeds). Set the juice aside.

2) Bring your water and sugar to a boil, whisking so all the sugar granules are gone. Take off of heat and pour into a large metal bowl (plastic is no good for freezing). Stir in the berry juice and lemon juice.

3) Place in the fridge for at least an hour so everything is cooled down (you do not want to put it in the freezer while it's still lukewarm). After giving it a bit of a whisk, place it in the freezer for 40 minutes. Take it out, stir with a whisk (or slowly with an electric mixer), and put it back in for 30 minutes. Do this for about 2 hours, or when your sorbet has lost all the liquid, and transfer to an airtight pint container. Freeze completely for at least one hour and enjoy!

okay, though I may complain, our vacation was pretty rad. especially the whole "climbing up an active volcano" thing.