We’ve finally arrived as parents… we made out first trip to the ER. Hooray. Ok, maybe that doesn’t deserve a cheer. Nope, no cheering, it sucked.

Long story short, Wave fell off a chair in the backyard and smacked her forhead on a metal handweight below the chair.  Blood was squirting a good 18 inches from her forehead.  At least this is what I’m told…. See, I was at work when I got this phone call from Jon (with a hysterical kid in the background), “get home, NOW.” Click.

Under other circumstances this phone call might require a bit of explanation before I just pack up and leave work.  But the crying in the background was all the explanation I needed.

I drove , FAST.   She smelled like blood and was beet red from screaming.  Can you imagine applying pressure to a toddler’s forehead, without them screaming?  Right.  But Jon did, because he knew he had to, for her safety.  She stopped crying the second I grabbed her, which made me feel a little better knowing whatever pain she was in could be somewhat minimized if she was in my arms.  Jon called her pediatrician to see if we should bring her in there, or the urgent care, or the ER, or just wait it out.  But of course, all they hear is ‘head bleeding’ and send us to the ER.  Which, frankly, is fine with me because I’d rather know we got her checked out than worry and wonder if her brain is bleeding or something dramatic like that.

The ER check in counter told us to wait in that corner (the kids area) away form everyone else.  So we did.  2 hours later a nurse comes over to us and says, “we’ve been looking for you and couldn’t find you.”  Oh hell, no she didn’t.  We’ve been sitting HERE, RIGHT WHERE YOU TOLD US TO SIT for 2 hours and not once did I see you even peek your head over here.   We spent 2 hours dabbing dripping blood from a toddlers head, trying to bribe her to be quite and sit still with hospital vending machine food.  At least the machine had pita chips and naked juice.  By the way, ERs are like libraries in the sense that if you talk to loud, your kid screams, or you make one weird movement, everyone stares at you like you just committed a flipping felony.  Don’t make me dump your filled barf bin over your head.  Oh ya, I gotta see a lady barf.  Hooray (fake cheer).  The day was going so well.

We finally get in a room, let’s just get this over with.  It takes 3 of us to hold Wave down while the doctor does her thing, like squirting brown liquid into her gash to clean it out, GROSS!  You know it’s never a  good thing when a doctor says, ‘oh wow, that’s a lot more blood than I expected.’  Good to know, the kid clots well.  The doctor applied some durabond glue stuff to seal her up and then I quickly grab Wave.  I think I needed to hold her as much as she needed to be held.  She immediatly stopped crying.  I breathed a little sigh of relief, again, knowing at least my embrace could calm and soothe her a bit.  The poor thing took those deep, sniffly, about-to-break-into-tears-at-any-second-breaths for the next 30 minutes.

We finally left (after almost 4 hours) and just chilled at home.  We’ve never watched a kid movie with her before, so we had another first for the day.  Rango.  She just kept barking at the lizard guy, it was funny.  We needed that comic relief.  She finally went to bed and I immediately headed toward the freezer.

2 bowls of vanilla ice cream later and I finally felt like the day was done.  And it ended on a high note. Oh wait, I forgot, I have dark chocolate sauce in the fridge.  Cha ching.  After 3 bowls of ice cream, now, NOW the day could conclude.

I originally made the vanilla ice cream to go with my sweet blueberry pie.  There is just something so simple and so perfect about pie and ice cream.  It’s just GOES!  But really, vanilla bean ice cream goes with everything.

 

Print
Vanilla Bean Ice Cream with Dark Chocolate Sauce

Vanilla Bean Ice Cream with Dark Chocolate Sauce

Ingredients

    Vanilla Bean Ice Cream:
  • 7 egg yolks
  • 3 cups whole milk
  • 1 cup heavy cream
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 2 tsp vanilla bean paste
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • pinch of salt
    • Dark Chocolate Syrup:
  • 1 cups sugar (add more to taste)
  • 1 cup cocoa powder (the unsweetened kind)
  • 1 cup water
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 2 tsp vanilla extract

Instructions

Pour the milk and heavy cream into a bowl. Pour half the bowl into a saucepan and add the sugar and salt. Heat over medium heat (stirring occasionally so the milk doesn’t scald) until it’s almost boiling. Remove from the heat.

In a separate bowl, stir together the egg yolks. Pour some (about 1/4 cup) of the hot milk into the yolks, whisking constantly as you pour. Continue adding the hot milk until it’s all added. Pour the warmed mixture back into the saucepan.

Cook over low heat, stirring constantly (with a wooden spoon or spatula) and scraping the bottom. Cook until the custard thickens enough to coat the spatula.

Pour the custard through a strainer into the bowl with the remaining cold milk mixture. Add the vanilla extract and vanilla bean paste and stir. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate to chill completely (a few hours at least). Can be chilled for an entire day though.

Freeze the custard in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions.

Eat immediately for a softer ice cream, or scoop ice cream into a freezer safe container and freeze for a few hours to let it get firmer.

Can stay in the freezer up to 1 month. But it won’t last that long, promise ;)

To make the dark chocolate sauce:

In a medium saucepan (no heat yet), whisk together sugar and cocoa powder until most of the lumps are gone. Pour in the water and salt and heat over medium, stirring frequently (with a small whisk). Bring it to a boil and cook for about 3 minutes (until it thickens), stirring frequently. Remove from the heat and let it cool for 5 minutes, then add the vanilla extract.

Store in air tight container in the fridge for up to 1 month. The syrup thickens as it chills, just add some water and shake the container if you want to thin it back out.

Schema/Recipe SEO Data Markup by ZipList Recipe Plugin

http://www.fatgirltrappedinaskinnybody.com/2012/06/vanilla-bean-ice-cream-dark-chocolate-sauce/

 

 

Oh, and Wave is doing juuuuust fine.   She took her first fall and ER trip like a champ, that kid is awesome!