Death wish

The streets and sidewalks of C'ville have been flooded with electric scooters since last December, to mixed reviews from the locals. I see people darting in and out of traffic riding these things without a helmet or elbow or knee pads and think they're out of their minds. I remember when we got Dylan a Razor kick scooter when he was little and the first time out he fell and scraped himself up all over. Even though that was the end of the Razor scooter, I literally still have nightmares about you guys falling off of those things, and they don't even have motors. So imagine how I feel every time we're driving through town and Cassie says she really wants to try one of the electric scooters.

A death trap waiting for its next victim near the City Market

Last week, the Daily Progress picked up a story from the Associated Press* about how the scooter boom has led to a rash of injuries and fatalities among users. The story starts out with the tale of Andrew Hardy, a 26-year-old guy who was struck by a car while riding a scooter (without a helmet, of course) in downtown L.A. Hardy broke two bones in each leg, shattered a kneecap, punctured a lung, fractured three vertebrae in his neck, and suffered a head injury when he was thrown 15 feet in the air by the impact. The doctors told Hardy he'd be paralyzed for life, but he's learned to walk again after five months of rehab. Not surprisingly, Hardy has sworn never to ride another scooter again, saying that "[t]hose things are like a death wish" and shouldn't be available to the public.

The AP backs up Hardy's statement with media reports of at least 11 deaths in the U.S. since the beginning of 2018, not to mention the many other people, like Hardy, turning up in ERs all over the country with serious injuries. In Austin, Texas, for example, public health officials tallied 192 scooter-related injuries in just three months in 2018, nearly half of which were head injuries, including significant numbers of concussions and other traumatic brain injuries. I underlined the scary parts of the article and left it for Cassie to mull over:

I don't know if I've managed to snuff out Cassie's scooter death wish, but even if my ploy was successful, it still won't stop my nightmares anytime soon.

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*Actually, the Daily Progress picked up less than 30% of the AP story, printing only 368 words from a 1,268-word story. The Progress does this all the time. If I read an interesting story that's not locally produced, I often go online to read the rest of the story, because the Progress can't bust its budget by turning out more than a dozen pages or so of newsprint on any given day.

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Dylan's bounty is the unwitting gift that keeps on giving. Cassie helped me go through the latest crop of food magazines to arrive in our mailbox courtesy of Dylan, and we both picked out this simple dessert from Rachael Ray Every Day, which is a quick way to turn plain vanilla ice cream into something more indulgent on a hot day. If you want to kick it up another notch, make yourself some good brownies and have brownie ice cream sundaes with cherry sauce.

Ice Cream Sundae with Cherry Sauce and Toasted Pecans

Ice Cream Sundae with Cherry Sauce and Pistachios
(which everyone agrees I should have chopped)

Ice Cream Sundaes with Cherry Sauce

Adapted from Rachael Ray Every Day (June 2019)

Time: ~30 minutes

This recipe uses three-quarters of a 16-ounce bag of Trader Joe's Pitted Dark Sweet Cherries. Use the rest of the bag the next morning in your Fruit Smoothie or just eat them straight out of the bag for a frozen treat. As Rachael Ray would say, "Yum-o!"

340 grams/12 ounces frozen pitted cherries (I love Trader Joe's Pitted Dark Sweet Cherries) (see note)
2 tablespoons (30 grams) water
25 grams (2 tablespoons) granulated sugar
15 grams (1 tablespoon) freshly squeezed lemon juice
½ teaspoon cornstarch, dissolved in 1 tablespoon (15 grams) water
~1 pint good vanilla ice cream (such as Trader Joe's Ultra Premium French Vanilla Ice Cream)
Chocolate shavings
Pistachios or toasted pecans, coarsely chopped

    1. Place the cherries, 2 tablespoons water, sugar, and lemon juice in a medium saucepan. Bring to a boil over just short of high heat. Cook, stirring often and reducing the heat as needed to maintain a very lively simmer (but not a roiling boil), until the cherries are breaking down, about 9 minutes. Stir in the cornstarch slurry, and simmer for 1 more minute. Remove from the heat and cool for 10 minutes.
    2. Scoop 2 or 3 scoops of ice cream into each of 4 bowls. Spoon the cherry sauce over the ice cream. Sprinkle with chocolate shavings and nuts. Serve immediately. Makes 4 sundaes.