I have been on a bit of an ice cream kick lately since I picked up the ice cream freezer attachment for my KitchenAid Mixer. This is essentially a big bowl that you freeze overnight and then attach it to the mixer which agitates the ice cream mix and helps it freezer in very small, smooth crystals.
We have made a gelato, a granita and some great vanilla ice cream with it, but I am always on the lookout for new things to try.
While it might be a little expensive to use this much Nutella, this recipe certainly sounds worth a try. We love Nutella and are currently nursing a huge bottle of Italian Nutella we brought back from our last trip visiting family in Sicily. Here in America, all the Nutella is made in Canada and, some say, has a slightly different flavor. Still, I think this could be great even using an off-brand of hazelnut-chocolate spread.
I first saw this recipe on Pinterest.com, which is exploding as the next great social media, link sharing site on the Internet. You can follow all my shared items on Pinterest by visiting my personal page.
Super Simple Nutella Ice Cream
Waaaaaaay back in the 1996 we were looking for a contractor to do some small work on the house we had just bought. Being a tech guy, I headed over to the Internet to see what I could find. Brian had an AOL web page that came up in a search, we contacted him and hired him for this small job and several larger jobs over the years.
He is GREAT to work with — professional with a great crew. In every case, he was able to clearly see what we wanted, offer great advice, and make it happen.
If you need a contractor for your project — large or small — give Brian a call. I think you will be as happy as we have been with his work over the years.
Brian McCarthy Associates
Licensed and insured general contractor in Southern California – License no. 668801
We specialize in residential remodeling and room additions, and we’ve done everything from fixing a chair to building a house. We’ve also done many select commercial/hospitality jobs. I personally designed many of our projects and have worked with some of the most talented architects and designers in the business.
You can see examples of Brian’s work on the web site linked above and also on these additional sites.
Tell him the Douglas and Rosanne sent you!
Blog | Brian on Houzz
I am a sucker for a cocktail, especially a nice warm cocktail for the cool Winter nights. Add to that my love for all things maple and this cocktail jumped out at me when I first saw the recipe. Blame my love for maple syrup on my Ohio childhood. We had a few folks who used to “sugar” around our small town and it was always such a treat when the syrup started to appear at roadside stands.
I don’t normally keep vermouth in the house, but thanks to the relatives from Sicily, I do have some Amaro sitting about. I don’t really like it straight, but mixed into this sweet cocktail I think the bitter would be a unique twist. I would probably add a but more maple syrup to my cup, just to make sure it wasn’t masked by everything else.
Click through for the complete recipe via Pinterest.
A few interesting items I shared over the last two weeks…
This is my homemade vanilla extract after just 1 day of steeping. Wow! This is going to be sooooooooo good!
I had purchased some vanilla beans from Amazon.com
in preparation for making vanilla extract, but darned if I had \ever gotten around to actually making it. One issue was finding a suitable jar to steep the beans and alcohol, but recently a jar of peaches presented the perfect container. It is wide mouthed enough to allow easy access when I need to add new beans and alcohol in the future, but not so large that I would make so much that I would never use it all.
Click for larger images
Since this jar is clear, I will keep it in a cool dark location so that sunlight doesn’t spoil the mix, but once I start drawing on this batch, I will move it to smaller, dark plastic or glass containers to keep in the kitchen.
So, how do you make vanilla extract? It couldn’t be simpler!
Take vanilla beans and steep them in vodka or other neutral grain spirits like Everclear. For this batch, I picked up a 1/2 gallon of inexpensive vodka I found on sale over the holidays. The alcohol will pull out all the vanilla goodness and turn a dark brown. The process takes a few months to work, but you will be rewarded with pure vanilla extract whenever you want to use it for your baked goods. This batch will come in handy for my next batch of cookie baking, for sure.
As you use the vanilla extract, you can top up the jar with more alcohol and let it steep some more. You will eventually will way to replace the beans as well, but you will be surprised how much flavor they contain.
I hope the SOPA/PIPA battle will help to hasten an end to those who are willfully and stubbornly ignorant about technology. Technology effects every part of our lives and I find it repugnant that anyone charged with governing would gladly brag about how little they know about it.
Could technology knowledge be a defining factor in breaking through the “old white men” bias of government and help to inject some new thinking into government?
One can hope!
You can discuss this issue over on Google+
Wild Fermentation: The Flavor, Nutrition, and Craft of Live-Culture Foods by Sandor Ellix Katz
Description from Amazon.com…
“Bread. Cheese. Wine. Beer. Coffee. Chocolate. Most people consume fermented foods and drinks every day. For thousands of years, humans have enjoyed the distinctive flavors and nutrition resulting from the transformative power of microscopic bacteria and fungi. Wild Fermentation: The Flavor, Nutrition, and Craft of Live-Culture Foods is the first cookbook to widely explore the culinary magic of fermentation.”Fermentation has been an important journey of discovery for me,” writes author Sandor Ellix Katz. “I invite you to join me along this effervescent path, well trodden for thousands of years yet largely forgotten in our time and place, bypassed by the superhighway of industrial food production.” The flavours of fermentation are compelling and complex, quite literally alive. This book takes readers on a whirlwind trip through the wide world of fermentation, providing readers with basic and delicious recipes-some familiar, others exotic-that are easy to make at home.”
There is a host of information regarding SOPA/PIPA on the web today, during this “blackout” You can find more information on Wikipedia or Google. This post is my take on what needs to happen next. — Douglas
What truly needs to happen next is direct action against the sources of funding for the MPAA/RIAA. Without their funding they cannot be effect lobbyists for bills such as SOPA/PIPA (and surely more to come down the pike).
It is time to starting working our way through the MPAA/RIAA membership lists and taking action to convince their members that associating themselves with the MPAA/RIAA is no longer a good deal, nor it is in their own best interest.
Further, if people want to stop bills such as SOPA/PIPA being produced, we all need to stop supporting/funding these bills with our movie, television and music listening choices. It can be hard to face the fact, but we ourselves have funded the bills that we are now protesting against.
“Follow the money” was Deep Throat’s advice and it still applies today. The money flowing to MPAA/RIAA members flows to their lobbyists and directly into our elected representatives coffers. Think about your actions next time you go to the movies or pick up a CD/DVD. Do you really want to be funding legislation that actively seeks to criminalize your Internet activities? Do you really want to have to protest bills that you yourself funded?
For myself, I find that I can more easily live without MPAA/RIAA member content than I can without the Internet and all that it provides. If it comes down to a battle between the two, and today shows that it has, I know where my loyalties lie. Close the theaters and studios and the record companies. It won’t hurt me one bit. I have many choices in music and entertainment these days beyond MPAA/RIAA. We are not longer living in a world of entertainment scarcity and it is time that these old guard companies learned that lesson. Innovate or get out of the way.
If we have truly awakened from our slumber, we need to understand who and what is funding these bills and cut off that funding at the source. Close your pocketbook to those entities that think maintaining their out of date business model is more important than benefits the Internet provides. Show them that they have truly been supplanted with so many alternatives that they no longer matter.
This is the way forward.
Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds
Description from Amazon.com…
Best-selling author and popular speaker Garr Reynolds is back in this newly revised edition of his classic, best-selling book, Presentation Zen, in which he showed readers there is a better way to reach the audience through simplicity and storytelling, and gave them the tools to confidently design and deliver successful presentations.
In this new edition, Garr gives his readers new, fresh examples to draw inspiration from, with a whole new chapter for those who present on more technical and educational topics based on techniques used by many presenters who give high-level talks at TED and other powerhouse events. Whether the reader is in research, technology, business, or education–this book will show them how to take what could look like a really dry presenation and reinvigorate the material in totally fresh (and sometimes interactive!) ways that will make it memorable and resonate with the audience.
Staying true to the mission of the first), Garr combines solid principles of design with the tenets of Zen simplicity to help readers along the path to simpler, more effective presentations that will be appreciated, remembered, and best of all, acted upon.
More information from Amazon.com
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