The ice cream sandwich conundrum

We've been getting geared up for summer at Generous Servings. First, we got some furniture for our brand-new patio. We had bought seven wrought-iron patio tables at an auction back in October, which have been living in my back yard, so first we had to rent a truck to move them to Generous Servings. Then we needed some chairs. We heard that there were some for sale at Costco, so I went out there with my boyfriend Matt, intending to buy 28 chairs and then go rent another truck to haul them back. Once we bought the chairs, I felt that it would be much easier to try to stuff them into our cars than to go through the hassle of renting a truck, so we called Jill's boyfriend David to meet us there with another car. Meanwhile, Matt and I worked on wedging the greatest possible number of chairs into my car. By the time David arrived with Jill's car, we had determined that we could fit all the chairs into back seats and passenger seats of the two cars, but now there were three of us, so someone wasn't going to be able to come home, at least not in any comfortable fashion. We discussed the idea of one of us riding in the trunk, and I was the only person who didn't feel claustrophobic at the thought (plus David and Matt were just being helpful, so it was pretty much up to me to sacrifice myself), so I was elected to go home in the trunk. It seemed kind of exciting, actually. But then David discovered that he could somehow fold himself around the chair legs in the back seat and actually sort of sit down, although he would be impaled if the car went around a corner too quickly. So Matt drove my car, I drove Jill's car, David squeezed into the back, and we got all the chairs home in one load.

Here's a picture of our building, with the patio out front and the pear trees in bloom:



A couple of weeks ago we were brainstorming about a fun summertime treat we could offer on the weekends, when there are lots of families walking around the neighborhood, and we came up with the idea to make ice cream sandwiches. We found good recipes for both chocolate and peanut-butter cookies for the outside of the sandwich, and I made a small batch to try out. The first weekend we offered them, we sold out and almost had food riots. So Jill and I went to work trying to figure out an efficient way to make a lot of ice cream sandwiches. This is not as easy as you might think--ice cream sandwiches are the messiest things I have ever made. Somehow we end up with both crumbs and melted ice cream all over the kitchen. But we are perfecting a top-secret method, which we may patent. Here are some cryptic photos of the process:




And then comes the secret part, where we get the ice cream inside the cookies, which we can't show you (actually, we just didn't take a picture of it, because both of us were so sticky). The final results (minus the mini chocolate chips we roll them in once they've had a chance to firm up for a while in the freezer):