Welcome to the Summer of Scoops!

When I decided to start the series with “We Are Lady Parts,” I researched Middle Eastern ice cream flavors and came across booza, which is the Arabic word for ice cream and typically has more of a stretchy consistency.

It has been referred to as the first ice cream in the world, so I figured it was a great choice to start my Summer of Scoops series. Find my ice cream 101 tips here.

This vegan, gluten-free rose booza makes 2 pints or 6-8 “servings.”

Ingredients
1 cup sugar
1 tablespoon sahlab (orchid flour)
0.25 teaspoons mastic powder
1.5 cups vegan cream
2.5 cups vegan milk
1 tablespoon rose tea or rosewater
0.5 cups chopped pistachios

Instructions
Steep some rose tea or rose petals in hot water.

Whisk the sugar, sahlab and mastic together in a pot. The sahlab can be replaced with cornstarch, and the mastic can be replaced with xanthan gum.

Continue to whisk the dry ingredients as you slowly pour in the cream and milk. I recommend pistachio milk or pistachio creamer if you can find them. Otherwise, go for creamy oat milk and plant cream.

Put the pot on a burner at medium heat and continue to whisk until it is just about to boil.

Remove the pot from the heat and whisk in the rose tea.

Pour the base into a bowl and allow it to cool completely.

Once it’s completely cool, give it a whisk and put it in the freezer for 30 minutes.

Pull it out, give it another whisk and put it back in the freezer for 30 more minutes.

Take it out of the freezer and stir it with a spatula as it starts to thicken up.

Transfer it to an airtight container. Add a quarter cup of pistachios.

Repeat the 30-minute chill and spatula stir process until the mixture is completely frozen.

Scoop, top with the remaining pistachios and serve with a season or two of “We Are Lady Parts!”

The Easy Route
You can buy rosewater instead of making tea. I went this way because we happened to have some rose tea.

If you have an establishment near you that sells vegan booza, please share the details in the comments.

The Pairing
“We Are Lady Parts” follows five young women from Muslim families in London who form a punk rock band. The first episode does a great job of introducing you to Amina (Anjana Vasan), Saira (Sarah Kameela Impey), Bisma (Faith Omole), Ayesha (Juliette Motamed) and Momtaz (Lucie Shorthouse), so I won’t go into too much detail here.

The show opens with Saira, Bisma and Ayesha, the current lineup of Lady Parts (managed by Momtaz), deciding they need to add a lead guitarist. That’s where Amina comes in.

Amina goes through a lot in the show, and is very reluctant to move forward with joining the band at first, seeming more interested in finding a husband than becoming a punk rock guitarist.

Complicating the matter is the fact that she gets violently ill whenever she has to perform in public, relegating her to only teaching music. In fact, Saira recognizes her from school, recalling that she threw up when she performed.

The band becomes a bit desperate for a guitarist, and they recruit Amina with a promise to set her up with Ayesha’s brother, Ahsan (Zaqi Ismail).

We are treated to some of the fantasy scenes in Amina’s head, which I absolutely love. They’re one of my favorite aspects of the show.

They also show key flashbacks this way, so the writers and editors working on “We Are Lady Parts” really deserve a lot of credit for bringing this complex and relatable storytelling together.

This show is a prime example of showing how women can be more than one thing. In addition to being a gifted guitarist and on the hunt for a husband, Amina is a student who works in a university science lab and has a core group of friends who are all engaged or married.

Similar character development is done for all of the band members, and I especially found the deep dive into Saira’s story to be completely compelling.

The first season drew me in and I wound up watching it multiple times, which is a rarity in these days of too many viewing options.

The second season was just released on Peacock last week, and I watched all six episodes in one sitting last weekend.

I hope the show gets a third season to do more exploring of these characters and release more awesome songs into the world.

“We Are Lady Parts” is everything I want in a show: it’s touching, it’s hilarious, it’s relatable. And the songs are incredible to top it all off. I cannot recommend this show enough, and at just 12 short episodes total, it is a quick watch.

If you decide to make booza and/or watch “We Are Lady Parts,” let us know! Tag us in your Instagram posts & stories, threads, tweets or TikTok videos: @veg_out_recipes