Honey Ice Cream

I was going to use all honey, but cheated just a bit because it's easier to mix the gelatin together with some sugar before trying to stir it into the cream.
They were out of cream the night before Thanksgiving, so I used half half-and-half and half milk. Came out splendiferously delicious anyway.

Ice Cream recipe:

1/2 cup sugar, mix with--
2 TBSP gelatin, stir into--
4 cups cream

Cook until just short of boiling

Beat 6 eggs in a separate bowl, then slowly drizzle the hot cream into the eggs while whisking them vigorously
(if you pour the eggs into the hot cream, you'll just get a pile of cooked eggs)

Cook two more minutes

Stir in--
1 cup honey
4 cups cream
3 TBSP vanilla

Pour into a shallow pan and freeze for an hour or two, then stir. Set a timer and stir more frequently as it hardens, until it's finally too stiff to stir.

We basically have to go to bed before it's ready and then eat it the next morning, or it doesn't last long enough to harden all the way :-)

This batch has already been got at, before it could even be photographed, as you see.

BTW that's a big pan of ice cream. It doesn't quite get across the sense of proportion, because it's a big spoon.

Bye-Bye Grape Bowl

I didn't have it very long. Got it at a neighbor's garage sale for a
buck because I thought it was so pretty, and the longer it was in the
kitchen the prettier I thought it was. I started using it for everything.
Then it went inside another bowl of just the right size and shape to
trap it, and I broke it trying to get it free.
Sigh.
Didn't think of taking its picture until the damage had already been done.
I really liked that bowl.

something like the trailer we lived in for a while

It was shortly afterwards that we moved from a large five bedroom house into a 19' trailer. I don't have any pictures of the inside of that trailer, but I had the bright idea to go look on the internet for pictures of "1980 Wilderness", and I found this.
Yes, this rings a bell.
My poor mother was NOT happy with the change.
I was! I loved living almost-outside.
The trailer had a bunk bed for me, and a little gold filigree shelf which I thought was the coolest thing ever. I kept a notepad and paper and flashlight up there for writing down all those brilliant ideas that always strike just before falling asleep.

Feast Gear Shopping at Goodwill

What do you think, do these look medieval??
I've gotta make a few cloth napkins too :-)

The goblet and knife are on the paper towel because after freezing them (to kill germs) I sprayed the wooden portions with Scott's Liquid Gold.
An adult's going to have to use the goblet and even then it's risky. It's tall, topheavy and the base isn't very wide.


It's all foreign-made of course, but at least the proceeds are only benefiting the thrift shop at this point!

All of them 25c each!
The gold spoon was Mike's choice. That isn't gold plating, is it? I can't tell! It doesn't look medieval at all, but at least it's pretty :-)
The two knives are touching because the handles are magnetized and can't stay apart!

Dataman - electronic toy of the 70s

Isn't it just short of cruelty to send little kids to bed?
I remember those HOURS lying there in the dark, commanded to go to sleep, but not sleepy. Nothing to do. Is there anything more frustrating than being forced to waste time?? That's why prison is a bad thing-- that sense of your life passing by IS the punishment!
Nowadays I have my Pocket PC or some other light-up electronic gizmo. I get through whole novels by reading until I'm drowsy and then putting the book down one second before I fall asleep.

So, I was tortured when I was less than nine years old, by being made to go to bed and be bored, but when I was nine, Daddy got me one of these :-)
I played multiplication games in the dark for hours and hours and hours. Dataman certainly got some math facts into the old brain cells, the painless way.

http://www.handheldmuseum.com/TI/Dataman.htm
http://www.handheldmuseum.com/BooksMagazines/Cat-Sears_78/Sears78_2.htm

Mama Hen and Chicks

First Mama hen we've ever had successfully hatch a batch of chickies!
We are totally tickled about it.

"Mama Hen" is in the vocabulary but how often do we get a chance to see one? An ordinary fluffy bird turns into an overprotective war machine. Most of the time you can't even see the little fluffballs because they're under her wings.
When I went out to fill up the feeder she tried to go for my legs-- neither of us were too sure what she was going to do, but by gum, she was gonna do it fiercely :-)




Ha! Score one for the big lady!!!

Started New QAYG Project

Yesterday being Sunday, I felt I couldn't sew on my Favorite Fabrics quilt. Now that my bed needs it desperately after all the other quilts have fallen apart, it falls under "work". 
So I started something new for fun :-)

I had a pile of 4" squares I've been accumulating. Some time previous I arranged some of them in groups of 4 and 5 coordinating to make blocks, and made them into a QAYG project using lighter tones for the backing and sashing... but then I ended up hating it and picked out the couple blocks I had made. Lighter color strips between blocks just didn't work. It'll have to be black or some strong tone.

I had this largish Mary Engelbreit piece that a friend gave me, with moons, sunflowers etc. It's a bit busy but dark enough to serve as the framing. I carved up the whole piece into backing pieces and got twenty of them. The last two had to be patched together, but I thought a 4 x 5 block quilt would be better than 3 x 6.

The 4" squares when sewn into nine-patch blocks come out 10-3/4", so I cut the backing 12-3/4"

Andrea is better at color harmonization, so I asked her to sort the squares into groups of 4 and 5. Now I have all the sets together in little piles.

I'm eager to get started on this!

The pics here show the blocks I had used last time and picked out. You can still see where the quilting was.

PS, I'm not having fun with Blogger right now. They wanted me to try the new interface, so I did, but it's obviously not optimized for those poor losers who still have dialup, so I switched back. But they switched me back to a version older than I'd had before, where I can't even resize the pictures.

So I updated again, hoping to just live with it...

But with the new version, I hit "Publish" and nothing happens! (And it doesn't publish)

I tried "Save" and finally "Close" and it told me I had unsaved changes...

I tried reporting the problem, filled out the feedback form and it says "Oops! Something went wrong!" So even the feedback form to report my error is malfunctioning.
Well, I'm back in the ancient version. Let's see if this at least publishes. The pics aren't the way I wanted them and I can't figure out how to make them larger in the code. Phooey.