Late Fall Ice Cream

I'd been on the library waiting list for months before it was my turn to borrow Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams at Home.

 

Given so many interesting flavor combinations I decided to flip through the book until I found two recipes I could make with ingredients on hand. The winners:

Celery Ice Cream with Candied Ginger and Rum-Plumped Golden Raisins - delicious flavor, but too many raisins.

Roasted Pumpkin 5-Spice Ice Cream - Perfect! I cant stop taking the container out of the freezer for just one more spoonful.

I like that the base for all the ice creams are thickened with corn starch rather than eggs, to me the taste is better.  I also found that both of these recipes didn't freeze rock solid like some of the other recipes I have tried.  This book is going back to the library tomorrow morning before my willpower fails and I make the Brown Butter Almond Brittle which in addition to lots of cream calls for three sticks of butter in a single pint.

Canadian Club Brand Center

A few weekends ago Mike's family treated us to a tour of the Canadian Club Brand Center in Windsor.

I'll admit I don't like Whiskey, especially without a mixer, but I really enjoyed the tour; the guide shared a lot of interesting information about the role of Canadian Club during Prohibition.

The view of Detroit from Canada always looks so nice!

Swim Meet

I spent last week near Sacramento competing in a synchronized swim meet. For three days my teammates and I were at the pool from dawn to dusk.  I spent much of that time in the tent city trying not to get sunburned.

On Saturday I was able to participate in an attempt at a Guinness World Record for the largest water float pattern.  There were 286 participants who formed the pink breast cancer ribbon. Here are the aerial photos. On Sunday my team routine won the gold medal in our age group (the average age of my team members is 50).

After the meet we moved on to Yosemite for the next two days... 

before heading back to Michigan.  I really liked this crystal and wood sculpture in the Sacramento airport, I'd love a smaller version hanging over my dining room table.

Raspberry Picking

Over the weekend Mom and I picked seven pounds of raspberries to make freezer jam. I've been enjoying the extras with whipped cream.

Twenty Seven Hour Flight Delay

I've been in Japan for almost a week. I should have been here longer, but my flight was delayed leaving me stuck at the airport for 27 hours. I was given a hotel room overnight, but this is how I passed the time at the airport:

 

I watched the fountain

and watched the birds

used extra food vouchers to 'buy' instant coffee

got a manicure

watched the plane engine being repaired

After 25 hours we finally got on the plane, which was almost empty since most people had given up on waiting and taken other flights

On the runway we were forced to go back to the gate for further repairs, but at the gate I convinced a flight attendant to get me cup of wine.

Anatomy of an August Sunday

Dream Cruise

Rain

Graduation Open House

Door Desk

My vision when I designed the basement space was to have a wall to wall desk, but then I fell in love with idea of a door desk.  Lucky enough I had an old door that was the right width to match up with some Ikea shelves to create my new desk.

Curtains

My special order fabric which was supposed to arrive in less than 6 weeks ended up taking 12, I've lived that long with only one curtain panel, but I couldn't be happier to finally have a finished set of curtains.

Tomatoes

The plants on my deck have ripe tomatoes, but I just can't bring myself to pick them.

The Foor is Done the Painting is Not

The bathroom floor has been finished for a few weeks (already?) but I still need to finish some caulking and painting around the shower.

The laminate vanity counter, which I already disliked, clashes terribly with the Travertine tile so I need to research my options for replacing it.

So Close

Over the course of three twelve hour days and then some my Dad took the my bathroom floor from demolished to finished.

My job was painting and bringing a constant supply of clean buckets of water during the grouting process. Unfortunately the grout needed 24 hours to cure, so the baseboards cant go up until tomorrow.  Almost there... 

This Floor 's About to Go

My Dad can't play golf this week (he normally plays almost everyday) so he offered to tile the floor in my master bathroom!  My job was the demolition...

Off to Madison

Cathy and John's wedding is this weekend so I am skipping out of work early today for the road-trip to Madison.

There have been no further developments in the basement, I am on strike until my favorite season  is over.

Summer Potatoes

Michigan red and gold potatoes with garlic scape 'pesto'

Summer Weekends

Looking forward to another beautiful Summer weekend! Hopefully the skies will be as pretty as they were last weekend while we were waiting for the fireworks to start.

Knee High by the Fourth of July

This week I had a business trip to Indiana (far less exciting than Japan!) As we drove through the endless fields of corn I was trying to explain the saying Knee High by the Fourth of July, but practically all the corn was already as tall as me.

Rainy Sunday

I am packing up to fly out tomorrow, but I wanted to share some more photos from last weekend.  Tomoki-san, who I first worked with more than seven years ago when I joined the company, offered to entertain me on Sunday.  Knowing that I have already been to a lot of places in the area, he suggested the Aichi Ceramic Meseum where you can look at the artifacts and then make some pottery on a manually turned wheel. I was really impressed with this piece that is a few thousand years old.

After the museum we had a mochi snack at a tiny tiny place near his childhood home

and then moved on this his favorite 'expensive bar' in Toyota city.

The whole place only had 11 seats, the bartender/owner apologized for being "a perfectionist who can only make one drink at a time," and the selection of liquor was like none I have ever seen - every surface was filled with bottles

My Favorite Holiday

I love daylight, and sun and the Summer Solstice.  The Solstice happens on the 22nd here and the sun will be rising at 4:39am! I'd love to see visit a Scandinavian country and see this someday.