We real cool

This month, I opened our electric bill and had an old-fashioned conniption. Denial and then despair soon followed. You see, despite our apartment's rather tiny square footage, it came equipped with not one, but two built-in air conditioners, and DK and I are both people who tend not so much to perspire, but pour. With the record heat in New York lately, we've had a few too many days of cranking both ACs while we lounge about, happily shivering.

My solution-that-isn't-really-a-solution was to get one of these:


To turn this:


Into this:


For the less-pictorially-oriented, that's ice cream maker + fresh basil = basil sorbet. (Or, to be more precise: boil 2 1/2 cups of water and 1 cup sugar, and cool the resulting syrup; pour into blender, add 2 cups of loosely packed basil leaves, juice from one lime, and blend, baby, blend; strain to remove the basil-leaf gunk, or not; stir in some lime zest; chill mixture in the fridge, 20 minutes or more; process in your ice cream maker; and eat.)

I'm happy to say that right now, we have two bowls of basil sorbet out and zero ACs on. And that's real progress, people.