Raspberry Lemon Sorbet

One would not think that a city like Seattle would have such an adoration for frozen sweets. While most of our days are marked my dreariness and we often seem to be caught in a perpetual drizzle, the unpleasant weather does not seemed to have deterred Seattlelites from our love of creamy cold desserts and a wealth of gourmet ice cream shops and gelaterias have sprung up all over town over the last few years. Some customers are so devoted that they’ll withstand freezing temperatures and torrential downpours in order to get a taste of such sweetness. As a couple that have found little success with making our own frozen delectables at home, my husband and I love to visit these shops whenever we’re off about town - I adore the floral and fruity flavors that can be found at Royal Grinders in Fremont, the Snickerdoodle ice cream at Bluebird is simply divine but, as of now, we enjoy the quirky flavors of Molly Moon’s most of all. The texture of their ice cream is just lovely and, while some of their flavor combinations are a bit too exotic for me, we almost always walk out of their shop with something tasty. Whenever Tim and I visit the Capitol Hill neighborhood, it does’t take long for one of us to find an excuse for an indulgent ice cream purchase and, not surprisingly, our trip to that part of two last Sunday was no exception.

I heard that there was going to be a food-oriented street fair last Sunday and I knew right away that Tim and I had to stop by. According to the various articles and features for the event, the 12th Avenue Street Fair is primarily a celebration of all the local restaurants around 12th Avenue and Pike Street and the festival promised to feature a plethora of cheap samples from these eateries. My imagination immediately went into silly mode upon reading about this event. While I certainly had not expected it to be a bountiful feast worthy of Greek gods, I was hoping to find a modest cornucopia of delectable edibles from around the neighborhood and I dreamed of basking gleefully in a food-induced frenzy as if I was Homer Simpson in the Land of Chocolate. A cornucopia, however, it was not. Upon arriving at the scene of the fair, we were met by only a hodgepodge of booths and, unfortunately, the festival itself was only the length of one city block and the food that was there was far from appetizing. One restaurant, for instance, was only offering watermelon soup with prawns. As oddly alluring as such a combination may have been to local foodies, the notion of serving soup as some sort of portable street food seemed absolutely ludicrous to me. Who are these people that are brave or skilled enough to walk around and eat soup on the go? Of course, we did still eat a little bit - I had some tasty lavender shortbread and Tim reluctantly gobbled up a toothsome almond biscotti - but the event was far from a feast of plenty. It was a bit of a letdown. Fortunately, we often do find a way to turn our sadness into gladness and we used our disappointing experience as leverage to indulge in some sweet treats from Molly Moon’s.

Tim and I, in a break for our usual routine, split a cone of raspberry lemon sorbet. While the sorbet flavors at Molly Moon’s often dabble too much in the weird zone for me (for instance, a lemon-ginger sorbet tasted a whole lot like fresh ginger and barely a bit like lemon) the raspberry lemon sorbet was utterly delicious. We ate it in Cal Anderson Park and enjoyed every moment. It was just delightful.