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PS - The opinions expressed in this blog are just opinions and personal preferences regarding the way I view life in general. Nothing in this blog is meant in any way to provide professional advice or guidance (no matter how good my opinion is) - seek a professional for your professional needs and just come here for entertainment and occasional tidbits of useful (again - my opinion) information.

Monthly Archives: June 2009

Late Start and Ice Cream

So I didn’t get productive today until after 1pm even though my day started with my weekly “get it done” group at 9:30am (and I wasn’t the only one in that group that could not get-it-done today). After that I kind of rocked it. I still have a lot of work to get through but I am looking forward to taking the afternoon off tomorrow and throwing a pool party for my “mom” friends and their kids. I have Mint Chocolate Chip ice cream freezing in the freezer and Vanilla Strawberry Swirl with Chocolate Shavings in the fridge ready for the ice cream mixer first thing in the morning. Amazingly the double batch of Raspberry swirl I made Saturday night is already gone even though my family didn’t return home until late Sunday – I guess it was a hit.

Off to slumber land. ta-ta

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Raspberry chocolate swirl ice cream and a toilet

So last night I was the maser of multi-tasking. I managed to put in a new toilet AND made a double batch of Raspberry Swirl ice cream with chocolate shavings in a cake batter base, all after 9pm.

Two things about the toilet installation…1. toilets are HEAVY and 2. don’t open the package of nuts and bolts over the gaping hole in the floor. Everything turned out all right in the end mainly due to the fact that my husband is a pack rat and doesn’t throw away anything so I was able to find a nut that worked.

I tried a completely new ice cream recipe and winged it with the swirl part but I have to say it is my favorite so far.  I have a neighbor who keeps joking that he wants boysenberry, kiwi and candied ginger ice cream, anyone know where I can find boysenberries? I am so going to make a single serving for him.

Here was my recipe…

Cake Batter Ice Cream Base Recipe (I doubled the below recipe for my 5 quart maker)

  • 1 cup milk
  • 3/4 cup granulated sugar
  • 2 cups heavy cream
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 2/3 cup yellow cake mix

In a medium bowl, whisk the milk and granulated sugar until the sugar is dissolved.

Stir in the heavy cream and vanilla.

Stir in cake mix, making sure there are no lumps.

I poured the mix through a fine mesh strainer to remove lumps into my ice cream maker canister (I have the kind that uses ice & salt) and let sit in the fridge overnight – you could skip this step and pour through stainer into your ice cream maker.

Freeze according to your ice cream maker instructions.

Remove ice cream from freezer bowl and place into a separate container.

Place the ice cream into the freezer to further harden.

If you want the raspberry swirl follow the instructions at the bottom of the raspberry sauce recipe.

Raspberry Sauce

  • 1 pint fresh raspberries or one 12-ounce package thawed frozen raspberries (I used 2 cups fresh picked)
  • 2 tablespoons sugar
  • 1 teaspoon lemon juice

Stir above together in container and refrigerate for at least six hours or overnight stirring occasionally. Mash raspberries to desired consistency.

Shave a king size chocolate bar (Using a veggie peeler is the easiest way) into the raspberry mix if desired.

If you have an ice cream maker where you can can add ingredients during mixing,  add this in slowly the last few minutes of the cycle and only enough to swirl though. Then transfer to container for further freezing.

If you have an ice & salt machine (like mine) pour half of the ice cream into your container, then the raspberry mixture and then the rest of the ice cream.  Fold gently to swirl though and place in freezer to further harden.

Raspberry Swirl Ice Cream

Raspberry Swirl Ice Cream

So much for a “working weekend”

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Lazy Saturday

  • June 27, 2009 – 1:54 pm
  • Posted in Just Me
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So…who needs morning? Apparently not me. I rolled out of bed just after noon today to get ready for Tyler’s game only to get a phone call from his mother that is was rescheduled for 3pm. You would think I would see this as an opportunity to pound out a few things I need to get done, nope. Here I sit on the couch two hours later with a basket of unfolded laundry at my feet (at least it is clean). Oh. and I made a list of things I want to get done today – does that count? Okay, now that I have it down in black and white I feel like a bum. Off to fold some laundry – ta-ta

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Food?

How stupid do you have to be to “forget” to eat?

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Evening of baseball

  • June 26, 2009 – 9:51 pm
  • Posted in Just Me
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So I was able to attend a baseball game in beautiful weather tonight all by myself, no kids (except for the one playing of course), no husband. Tyler played almost every position on the field – catcher, outfield, short-stop and pitcher and did well at them all. He managed to get walked at one at bat and proceeded to steal his way to home in the next three pitches. They lost in the very last inning by one run due to some very poor calls by the umpires (one especially bad one involving a catcher “balk”). All-in-all it was a fun night and looking forward to another game tomorrow.

I am home alone this weekend. Daryl has taken Ethan and the dog camping and the older boys are with their “other” families. I would love to say I am going to do something fun but I think it will be a great time to catch up on some laundry and buckle down on the “projects” I have been avoiding. I also think I will install a new toilet in the basement but we will see how motivated I am in the morning. ta-ta

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Internet Browser Tip

Ever find that pictures or fonts on a specific website are hard to read? Maybe the website is too wide and you can’t view all of the content without scrolling? Or maybe you just want to view the Internet game you are playing larger (Paul)?

Try this tip (does require a roller ball mouse).  Hold down the CTRL key on your keyboard while rolling the ball forward (to make larger) or backward (to make smaller) to adjust the screen magnification.

You can also accomplish the same thing by holding down the CRTL key and tapping the (+)  key to make it larger or the (-) key for smaller. This works in both Mozilla (Firefox) and Explorer. Make sure to adjust back to the “normal” view mode when you are done by holding the CRTL key and pressing the zero key  (or like me leave the font really really tiny to mess with people).

PS – this works in many other programs as well – including Excel and Word

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Gotta minute?

How can a game (Bejeweled Blitz) that by design lasts only a minute, consume hours of my day?

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Office 2007 Tip

So for those of you who went kicking and screaming to Office 2007 and can’t seem to find ANYTHING you are looking for with the new “ribbon” menus (where the heck is the print?) this tip is for you. It is the “Scout” Search commands here is a blurb from the site…

“You know there’s a button for it, but you don’t know or remember where it is. If this ever happens to you, check out Search Commands. You can use this concept test today to quickly find the commands you need in Microsoft Office 2007 Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Just search with your own words and click on the command you need.”

Hopefully you will find this as useful as I did.

PS – add a quick print to your shortcuts like this (or anything else you want using the more commands selection from this same menu)

Quick Access

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Ice Cream – Again!

For those of you who have known me for awhile you know that I have a “thing” for making ice cream. As a matter of fact, I purchased a new ice cream maker today compliments of my son who is working a garage sale at his dads. That makes number four (although number one didn’t last long so I technically only have three). Tonight the youngest is asking for plain ol’ vanilla – all the recipes I find are complicated and require cooking the base for a custard so we are going out on a limb and making it up, he’s only five, I want him to go to bed and besides, how sophisticated can his palate be?

So it went like this…

1 egg

2 egg yolks

1 1/2 cup heaving whipping cream (because that is all I had left – I WASN’T making a trip to the store)

2 1/2 cup milk (to get to the 4 cups liquid that makes the perfect amount for my storage container and see above)

3/4 cup sugar

2 teaspoons vanilla

whip eggs, add the rest and pour through a fine mesh strainer (to catch that yechy yolk casing) into your ice cream maker of choice and that’s about it.

Fast forward 35 minutes later and the ice cream is finished – not waiting for this one to go in the freezer, serving it up soft serve (did I mention I want him to go to bed?) PS – 5 minutes before it was finished I added mini-chocolate chips (because that is when he asked if he could have mini-chocolate chips in it)

Vanilla Chocolate Chip

Would have switched the amounts of cream and milk for a creamier texture (this was more like ice milk) but it was yummy – no complaints from the little one and FINALLY we can start getting ready for bed.

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What? Me? Blog?

  • June 25, 2009 – 7:43 pm
  • Posted in Just Me
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So I recently attended a workshop hosted by Lisa of Call That Girl and one of the thigs she said we HAD to do was create a blog. It’s up and coming you know. We are also supposed to tweet on twitter about our recent blog posts – good grief, I am lucky if I can remember to make coffee every day. I often find myself at 1pm wondering “why do I have such a HEADACHE” – ooh, caffine withdrawal. Soooo..here it goes. I often will ramble and occassionaly provide useful bits of info (but mostly ramble I am sure) – at the very least I hope you are entertained.

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