Happy Birthday, heinous_bitca!! Looks like no snow this year, but I tried :)

No seriously, go away - or better yet, go down to Texas where they really need you.

My niece had her second little boy yesterday and just over 24 hours later my nephew had his first child (a girl). That brings my Great Aunt tote board up to five - 3 boys, 2 girls. Considering I also had two weddings this summer I expect that total to go up next year. :)

This is about ice cream, I promise.

I made "real" ice cream this time. And to me, real ice cream is Philadelphia-style a.k.a. eggless. Ice cream recipes with eggs (a.k.a. French-style) are frozen custard, in my not so humble opinion.

Plus, I hate meringue and what else am I going to make with the 6-8 egg whites generated from those French style recipes? (note: this is rhetorical, please do not bombard me with egg white recipes)

Anyway - I had some bittersweet chocolate left over from bulrogue's last batch of Guinness Brownies so when I looked for a recipe I tried to find one that would use those. And I found this recipe.

I was voted down for adding the stracciatella, so really it was just plan chocolate ice cream. The boy declared (as he licked the dash clean after) it was better than a Wendy's frosty. Oh yes, he has his mother's pedestrian tastes all right.

On a technical note, I don't know whether it was the longer base chill time, the not 99° kitchen or that it was made with lovely full fat cream - but this time it set up much better in the churn. I have a picture of that but A)A load of soft chocolate ice cream in a container is not an attractive picture and B) I am Shaky McDrunkhands lately so every one I took was somewhat blurry.

( So where does my sister come into this? )

My ice cream dishes, let me tell you about them. My mom has a set, and one year when she was visiting we found another set at a church thrift store. What are the odds, I said to her. That's when she told me they were special premiums. In days gone by, some peanut butter brand (she forgot which) sold their peanut butter in these pretty reusable dessert dishes.

Seriously, why did I not live in the past? But hey, I got the set of 6 for $1 - so I'm not complaining.

It will come as no surprise that I am a huge reader. I came from a family of readers, I had four older sisters whose goal in life was to teach me to read as early as possible so I would be more interesting. This is why I was reading at age 4 - not Dick and Jane - but actual books. I have no idea how true this is but it is the mythology from my sisters. I do know my Mom blames my underachieving academic performance on the fact that I could read before I got to Kindergarten and thus got into the habit of being really bored at school.

ANYWAY, we never wanted for books growing up. I thank my Mom for my varied and eclectic reading tastes. There was a Goodwill walking distance from where my Mom worked, and she always picked us up a couple books every time she went (and then once we got old enough to walk there ourselves from school - we continued the tradition).

( Some books with cover pics )

Other books I always remember:

Volume 1: Fairy Tales and Fables (aka: the red one) from the Collier's Junior Classics aka The Young Folks Shelf of Books. That picture at the top? That's the set I remember (sadly, that picture is from Google). I'm pretty sure both my parents and my grandmother had this whole set (this was back in the days when people bought encyclopedias and book sets). There were ten volumes, but I was obsessed with the first one. Every time I was at Nana's (she lived next door, so that was pretty often), I read it. There were some obscure tales in this book, like Cap O' Rushes, The Glass Hill - and they were pretty unedited if I recall correctly. Rapunzel had the whole pregnant with twins thing that is usually sanitized out of modern versions. Even if I just got Volume one I'd be happy, but it has to be that 1960 edition. :) I just have to find someone who doesn't price them like they're selling the original copy of the Magna Carta...

Pelle's New Suit. About a little boy who outgrows his good suit, so he needs a new one. He turns to his pet lamb and the story goes through the shearing of the lamb, and Pelle getting various family members to help him process the wool - from carding, to spinning, dyeing, weaving and eventually getting his new suit made. I'd be willing to bet this book (and the Crayon Factory segment from Sesame Street) is what cemented my love of "How Things are Made". The covers I found were different from the one I remembered, I did find one on an old eBay listing that had it as a "first reader" edition - and those illustrations look more like what I remembered.

Here's my first experiment with the new KitchenAid ice cream attachment. My mixer is a Model KSM5PS Heavy Duty 325 watt mixer. Got it for Mother's Day 10 years ago - had no problem using the attachment. According to the directions, in 20-30 minutes you should get "soft-consistency ice cream and other frozen desserts" I, however, do not really expect "ready to eat" ice cream in that time. I know that's a complaint some people have about this attachment - but seriously I don't think any non-commercial ice cream maker is going to produce that without some freezer curing time.

Strawberry frozen yogurt

Ingredients
2 cups vanilla yogurt (can use plain, just add a couple tsp vanilla to it)
2 cups pureed fresh strawberries
1 (14 ounce) can sweetened condensed milk
1 cup milk

Directions
In a large bowl, combine all ingredients. Fill cylinder of ice cream freezer and freeze according to manufacturer's directions. Allow to cure in freezer 2-4 hours before serving.

( Pics ahoy! )
This recipe was the perfect size for my 2 quart attachment with no spillover.

If you're not from the Sims community, this is not the post for you. But have a cookie since you bothered to log into LJ at all. :)

For the rest: I'm officially moving all my Sims related activity to my sim journal sim_dandy. I rejoined all the comms there just to pare down this journal a bit - not that I update either one with much regularity. So, if you see weird comments from sim_dandy, it's me.

And not for nothing, but why does it seem like when I finally go to use LJ it totally sucks and is laggy?

So - apparently I'm pretty dumb too.

Despite playing the tutorial and reading all the little pop-up lessons, I completely missed an entire submenu at the Create-A-Sim screen. And that menu? You guessed it, has all the sliders so you can tweak every single facial feature like crazy. Therefore, I retract my complaint about the limited nature of customization. Plus, I know this will make people happy - there is a pointy ear slider!

Now, some screen shots:
( Cut for kindness )

So I got The Sims Medieval last night. If you're not interested in my mini review, have a nice day, otherwise click on the cut. I forgot to reinstall Fraps on the new computer, so I didn't get many screenshots using the in-game camera. Hope to later.

Also - there may be what some people consider spoilers contained herein - so be warned.

( These reflections led you to an epiphany... )

Happy Belated Birthday, heinous_bitca. Sorry I'm a day late, I thought today was the 5th!