Vanilla Ice Cream with Roasted Cherry Swirl

Happy Fourth of July Internet friends! 

For my international friends out there, I hope you have an enjoyable Thursday.  For my American friends in the Internet ether, Happy Independence day! 

I hope that your day is filled with sunshine, cookouts, ice cream and warm weather.  I love living in the tri-state area this time of year because we can celebrate the holiday all week long!  There have been fireworks dotting the skyline since Saturday as the hundreds of townships in the area celebrate with local events.  Boyfriend and I headed to the Montclair fireworks last night and have big plans to view the fireworks of New York City, western Long Island and eastern New Jersey from high up in the hills of Upper Montclair tonight.

To celebrate Independence day this year, I decided to put my OXO fruit tools to use and make some cherry swirled vanilla ice cream.  A few weeks ago I received a package from OXO (via the OXO blogger outreach program) filled with tools to help us enjoy the summer fruit bounty.  The box included a pineapple corer, mango pitter, strawberry huller, fruit scoopers and this cherry pitter! 

Using the cherry pitter cut my prep time down significantly and my cherry sauce was in the oven in no time.  Cherries are delicious all on their own, but roast them in the oven with a little sugar, you've got a winner.  Rather than just topping the ice cream with the roasted cherry sauce, I decided to swirl it right into the just churned ice cream.  Super delicious, perfectly refreshing for the fourth of July!

Disclaimer - I received the OXO fruit tools as a part of the blogger outreach program.  All opinions about the tools are my own and I have not been compensated for this post.

Strawberry-Bacon Pizza

Say hello to delicious.

During my days of unemployment, I usually wander around Montclair, read books at Starbucks and bake cookies for Boyfriend.  Lunch often falls by the wayside and I wind up having a yogurt around 3:00.  Yesterday I was inspired to actually make lunch after flipping through Fitness magazine.  This strawberry and goat cheese pizza screamed my name.  Top it all off with a hefty load of crumbled bacon and I was tearing this recipe from the magazine and heading to Whole Foods. 

This pizza comes together quickly, which is perfect for someone craving bacon and goat cheese.  Using naan for the pizza crust, this lunch went from ingredients to delicious in only fifteen minutes. 

And it was amazing.  I should make lunch more often.

Wilde week #18

1. It's been another fun week of unemployment here in the Wilde household.  Actually I've been trying convince Boyfriend to quit his job too so we can both be unemployed.  He doesn't seem to keen on the idea.  I guess I'll have to continue to entertain myself during the weekdays.

2. Yesterday BF and I headed to Palisades State Park and hiked over ten miles along the Jersey shore.  If you aren't familiar with the area, the Palisades are right on the NJ/NY state line.  We actually hiked up into New York.  That's me up on that tree swing, enjoying a relaxing moment at the halfway point of our trek.  This swing sits over the Hudson river, open to the breeze and right in the soft spray of the water lapping at the rocks below.  It's a funny place to hike, knowing NYC is only a few miles to the south.

3. Without my daily commute to Long Island, I have really been slacking on my book reading.  On a normal day, I would have four hours on the train to burn through the pages of about two books per week.  I'm a multitasker and I felt that commuting and reading was like getting two things done at one time.  Sitting and reading at home just seems lazy to me.  I am about 80% of the way through the new Dan Brown novel - Inferno, and really want to get to the end.  Since my reading of the book has been so broken up and the book is a little bit confusing, I feel like I have to keep jumping back and forth to remember what happened earlier.  Has anyone else read this book and been totally confused?  Or is it just me?

4. Last week I headed up to Boston for another job interview.  I haven't been to Boston in years and forgot how nice it is there!  It's a much smaller city that NYC and so much more walkable.  Plus, it is home to Wagamama, a fun little asian fusion restaurant that BF and I both love.  Actually, there are two locations of this restaurant!  Totally reason in an of itself to make the move north.  With all these job interviews all over the place, I wonder where I'll be by next year!

5. This Wednesday I headed into the city to meet up with the girls.  We had a plan to meet up at Clinton Street Bakery and get brunch.  Apparently all the tourists in NYC also thought that would be a great place to spend their hump day morning.  Seriously, an hour wait on a Wednesday?  Welcome to tourist season in the city.  We decided it would be silly to wait and walked down the street to another cafe.  Why wait for a table in New York?  There are thousands of restaurants!

6. Speaking of Hump day.  Have you seen the Geico commercial with the camel walking around an office asking people what day it is?  HUMP DAY!  Love it.  Watch it.

7. Have you migrated your Google reader over to a new platform yet???  Be sure to do it today, because it's the last day!  I can't believe that it's finally shutting down.  It was my first blog reader!  Oh the memories I have with Google reader...  Personally, I migrated my blog list over to Feedly.  I really like it because they have a great iPad and iPhone app and I can read my feeds from anywhere!  Others have touted Bloglovin, I haven't tried it out yet.

8. I am super terrible when it comes to blogger about holidays.  By the time realize it's almost July 4th or Halloween or Valentines day, there isn't time enough to cook or bake, then photograph and post.  Enjoy July 4th this week!  Make something tasty.