Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Georgeous Gelato Recipe: My Creative Space

For my birthday my husband bought me a much desired SNO Whytner kitchen ice cream machine. No freezing of parts..just make my base, add flavors and pour it into the machine. I purchases a couple of gelato books and even played around with a few of the recipes. He made fancy ones that were frankly too rich and did not have that fresh summer taste that I have come to enjoy at my local shops.

The recipe:

1 and 1/2 cups heavy cream
1 and 1/2 cups 2% milk
2/3 cup sugar
2 teaspoons of good vanilla

on medium heat stir the mixture in a sauce pan until the sugar dissolves. continue to cook stirring occasionally until fine bubble appear around the edges of the pan. Remove form the heat and let sit (for cooling) for 30 minutes. Move the mixture to the refrigerator and cool for another hour to two hours.

This is your base. You can now experiment with any flavors you like. Tonight I added 1/2 cup of orange juice and 1/2 cup of sweetened shredded coconut right before pouring my mixture into my ice cream machine.

I am sure this would work equally well in an old fashioned ice cream machine, the kind where you freeze the bowl or even in a pan in the freezer with frequent visits to give the mixture a stir (see granita recipes for instructions).

I just had a small scoop and the ice cream was DELICIOUS! very fresh and Summer-like just when we are threatened with yet another snow storm!

If you give this a try let me know what flavors you add. I am thinking about apricots.

Saturday, February 12, 2011

Barbershop Punk

A student of mine after class one night told me about this little film that was about her dad's little run in with Comcast (cable company) and the transfer of some historical barbershop quartet music. My student said that she thought I might be interested in seeing it as I was married to a computer engineer. She was right. Today we attended he documentary at our local International film festival. The film, called barbershop punk was very well done. David enjoyed it but wished he had heard more technical information. I liked it and thought it would have been ruined with more technical speak. Grace liked it but would have like less technical speak :) My guess is that means they nailed it!

If it comes to a cinema near you and you are at all interested in anything about the internet and how our content is controlled by our internet providers go see it!


xxxooo

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

My Creative Space: Grace

Spring is coming we hope:

Grace age 9 came home from school today and opened the door to the back patio just like it was summer today. The sun is sending mixed messages to us out here in the west. The sky is clear. the sun is out and green things are beginning poke up out of the ground. I suggested she go get the camera and go out to take some pictures. She did...and these are the result.
Sadly it is colder outside than it appears and she had to close it to keep the heater from kicking on over and over again. As she sat in a chair looking out through a large sliding glass door she said, "that one green tree in with all of those tall brown ones would make a great painting".



pop on over to Kootoyoo for more creative spaces