I Scream! You Scream! We All Scream For Ice Cream (That I Made Weeks Ago And Which Now Is Gone)!

While we're waiting for my kid to turn into a goddamned grownup even though I am not ready for such a ridiculous thing to happen because COME ON SHE IS ONLY A BABY WAIT WHERE DID MY BABY GO WHO IS THIS EXTREMELY TALL TALKATIVE BOSSY PERSON SLEEPING IN HER BED WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH MY BAAAAAAAAABY YOU FIEND, let's talk about ice cream.

A while back, I got this incredibly inspired idea that I have approximately 80 bajillion dollars worth of Kitchen-Aid appliances and accessories in my kitchen that I haven't used in maybe a hundred years, so let's bust everything out and do something with them. I guess you could say I went on a Wheaton-esque "get excited and make things" kick for about twenty minutes.

I decided to make ice cream because it was very hot at the time. The heat has broken some in the meantime, but at that particular point it was too damned hot to even write about it. Hell, it was almost too hot to EAT it. But we took all our ingredients and spread them out on the stove so I could take a picture of them, and then we got to work.

We could not reach a consensus on what kind of ice cream to make. I've made ice cream before, in those practically prehistoric Days Before Children, but this was my first attempt with a very militant chocoholic in the house. Which could have been dicey, because I don't like chocolate ice cream (I know, it's un-American, WHATEVER, I'm already a socialist so hush). The compromise recipe was for cherry chocolate chip, which we made using 2 cups heavy cream, 2 cups half-and-half, 3/4 cup sugar (divided -- most of it in the ice cream, 2-3 tablespoons for the cherries), 1 tablespoon of my 15-year old Mexican vanilla (not I am not joking, my vanilla is THAT OLD), 2 dashes kosher salt, 3/4 cup fresh sweet cherries, and 1/3 cup mini semisweet chips.

At this point I will tell you what we did wrong. One, we should have used all cream -- either all heavy cream, or a combination of heavy and light cream. The final texture using the half-and-half was a bit too grainy. We might have been okay if we did a custard-style ice cream, but I didn't want to do that much work, and my eggs are always a bit dodgy. Also, we did not cut up the cherries into small enough pieces, nor did we let them "marinate" long enough. Probably we should have prepared the cherries the day before, let them soak up all the sugar, and then mashed the snot out of them.

We left our ice cream bowl in the freezer for 24 hours. We might want to let it go longer than that next time, but it was mostly okay. Our ingredients were not cold enough when we put them in the bowl; if you follow this recipe, I recommend putting everything in the freezer for at least an hour before adding it to the ice cream bowl. Let the mixer do the work for about half an hour or so (according to directions), and add the cherries and the chocolate chips for the last 10-15 minutes.

Also: you will need to freeze your ice cream before you can eat it. We let ours sit overnight before we ate it. So, basically, we started the process on Sunday (bowl in freezer), made the ice cream on Monday, poured it into covered containers and let it "ripen," and then finally ate it on Tuesday. Was it worth the wait?

Mostly. Like I said, our ice cream had an "off" texture, and because the cherries were not cut small enough some of them were basically solid chunks of frozen fruit when we finally ate it, plus since we didn't let them "marinate" long enough we got random bites of cherry that were more tart than others, but overall, the flavor was quite good. I really liked it. I'd definitely make it again, making a few small tweaks to the recipe and process. Although it was not all chocolate, the chocolate chips satisfied the animal urges of the not-so-little one.

Stockings Are Hung by the Chimbley with Care

I've been doing Christmas decorations for basically the whole last week -- not that you'd be able to tell from the outside, because it's freezing cold and we have all the shades pulled down tight to keep the wind out. Drafts suck. Anyway, I've done three trees (work, the lights at my mom's, and my own), plus my cube decorations, and the stockings at home. A couple of glimpses:

Our tree this year is smaller than last year's, but not by much. The specs: Fraser fir, about 5½' high, smells delicious. The branches are nice and soft and "relaxed" by now, and there is plenty of room for all our new and old ornaments. Instead of the customary gold-silver-and-white color scheme, this year we added some aqua, pink, lime green, and purple, which we mixed in to what we already had. I'm not going whole hog into the color thing -- there will never be colored lights on my Christmas tree, ever, not as long as I live and breathe -- but perhaps eventually I will loosen up enough to put all my "Star Trek" ships on a tree someday. When my kid is older and I don't need to worry about the cats breaking anything.

Never colored lights though.

Official light inspectors. Totally gratuitous.

I somehow managed to combine three different sets of decorations here, and I'm not sure that any of them match my house, my other decorations, or my personal style, except for my stocking -- and it's obvious which one is mine because (1) it's got an "R" monogram on it, (2) it's purple, and (3) it's made of TONS OF EFFING SEQUINS. I LOVE sequins.

Lions and Tigers and Bears (LOLwut?)

So, riddle me this.

If it didn't say "Bears" right at the top of this drawing, would you have been able to figure out what this was?

Yeah, me either.

Hark the Herald Angels Sing

I was totally going to write this Christmas Eve post about "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" by Robert Frost and how it's one of my very favorite poems and I think it's about Santa taking a rest for a thermos full of Irish coffee halfway through his rounds and it was going to be all pensive and thoughtful and tender and existential and English major blahblahblah but I changed my mind because I GOT SOME PRESENTS!

And even better -- they're the HOMEMADE CRAFT PROJECT KIND.

Yes, we got the usual assortment of handprint poems and construction paper stockings decorated with glitter and cotton balls and tempera paint, and those are of course awesome, but two of the gifts in particular are SPECTACULAR and right now I have to say that I am TOTALLY IN LOVE with Shae's pre-school teachers because these craft projects are pretty kick-ass.

First up:

A frickin' water globe. This is way impressive. It's so simple -- your basic water and glitter inside a Ball jar -- but it's the simplicity of it that makes it so wonderful. I mean, who doesn't love water globes? I know Shae loves playing with water globes (we've already broken two this year) so I can just imagine how much fun it was to actually make one. But it is the cute little details that make it so extra special, like the picture of Shae sealed inside the lid and the compass in the stock and this thing which tells time and the little ornament that floats inside:

I am so enamored of this thing, in fact, that I might try to make some as gifts next year, if I don't forget all about it by then. But the very best present of all is my new favorite ornament that we have put in a place of honor on the tree, up near the star:

How precious is that? A little angel made of toilet paper rolls and tinsel, with her little face on it? I mean, it's not quite the soft glow of electric sex gleaming in the window but CAN YOU IMAGINE THE ADORABILITY OF THIS THING? Sweet cracker sandwich. Now I know why, for years and years, my mother had boxes of ornaments that we made in school, carefully wrapped in tissue and newspaper, packed away in a box, kept away from everything else where it would be safe.

And that is the true Christmas miracle, right there: that I am turning into my mother a little more every day AND I DON'T EVEN CARE. Not one bit. Because you totally know I'm going to get some kind of plexiglas action-figure box to keep this ornament in, I love it so.

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In all seriousness, whatever you're doing this Christmas Eve: be careful, be safe, and most of all, be loved. Remember that we've all got miles to go before we sleep. Merry Christmas, and may God bless us, every one. xoxo.

Wordless Wednesday: Hot Chocolate

Pennsylvania and Some Homemade Pizza Pie

Who knew that there are no Christmas songs that mention pizza? What kind of nonsense is that? There are songs about Grandma getting smooshed by livestock and Santa losing his ever-loving mind and Swiss Colony frickin' beef logs, but not Christmas pizza? Seriously, what is wrong with the world? Honestly, you'd think this was a religious holiday or some such balderdash.

Anyway ... we have like 3 pounds of assorted shredded cheeses in the refrigerator, because HEY YOU NEVER KNOW -- don't you judge me! -- and we're running out of room for essentials like hundred-year-old jars of cocktail onions and warehouse-club size vats of dill pickles, so we've decided to start, you know, using some of it. And since we can't really get a decent pizza in our little town, we decided to make our own.

I have a bread machine that I got for my birthday a few years ago, so technically we could have made our own dough, but we went the Boboli bread shell route because we figured (correctly) that it would be quicker and easier. Also, we wanted to give Shae a shot at "cooking," and even for a hyperactive toddler, it's pretty hard to screw up "painting" pizza sauce and sprinkling cheese on top of a ready-made circle of bread.

And it turned out to be a pretty darned good pizza, too. I mean, it's not gourmet wood-burning brick-oven pizza made from imported organic semolina and maiden-made fresh goat's-milk cheese or anything, but it was easily as good as frozen Ellio's, which everyone knows is the food of the gods. And Shae was pleased as punch that she got to "cook dinner," which was the point of the whole exercise, anyway. And then we watched "The Year Without A Santa Claus" and G and I wondered what the hell drugs the Rankin and Bass people were taking back in the '70s.

So, you know, typical day in our house.