Bagpipes at the top of Half Dome

Whens the next performance!

Homemade Mint Chip Ice Cream

We made this Ice Cream for the fourth and it turned out (or churned out) exceptionally well. This recipe makes a large, family sized batch, so, unless you have a big enough ice cream maker, you might cut it down a bit. Or, if you’re having a party, make a couple batches!

We have had problems, and maybe you have too, with the ice cream freezing too hard. This recipe with this preparation froze to a really nice consistency. There is some left over in the freezer right now and it’s still quite soft.

I used almost a half pound of Trader Joe’s 72% dark chocolate. It was awesome, especially if you like chocolate. Some thought it wasn’t sweet enough and that there was too much. And then some, myself included, thought it was just right. If you're using a chunk of chocolate like I did, slice / shave it, then chop it up a bit. You should know when it is chopped to the right size...just feel it. (: After you have shaved and chopped the chocolate, you'll notice that there is a powder that as accumulated. I think it is best to sift that out...you just want chunks in the ice cream; you don't want that powder to turn it in any way brown. It was super easy to sift it out just using an ordinary plastic strainer (a sieve would probably work too).

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Makes 6 quarts

4 cups (2 pints) whipping cream
1 qt half and half
6 cups whole milk

17 egg yolks
28 oz sugar

3 tsp peppermint extract (flavorganics is what we used)
6 to 8 oz chopped dark chocolate
12 drops of green

Heat the milk ingredients to a low simmer. Meanwhile, separate the egg yolks into a medium to large sized bowl. Wisk the yokes until they have lightened in color and about doubled in volume. Add the sugar slowly to the yolks.

Scoop out some of the milk (a quarter to a third) and slowly pour it into the yolks to temper them. Be sure to be whisking the yolks while pouring the hot milk into them, it works best with two people. Now stir the tempered mixture into the rest of the hot milk. Continue to cook, stirring constantly, until the mixture reaches 170° to 175°. Turn of heat and pour into a refrigerator proof bowl with a lid. Chill the mixture for 4 hours or preferably overnight.

Churn the ice cream in your maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions and blah blah blah. Now you can either add the extract, chocolate and green in a little before the ice cream is done churning and let the ice cream maker do the work or you can stir it in yourself. We had to stir it in because we didn’t get it in the maker soon enough. And when our ice cream maker stops, it stops.

Transfer the ice cream to a container and freeze it for at least 4 hours before serving.

Life’s short. Enjoy eating ice cream. And by the way, happy Independence Day!!

Click here for a printable version of this recipe

And Happy Father's Day!

Well I haven't posted since Mother's Day and it's already Father's Day! We'll be spending the day with my Grandpa (my dad's dad). I am truly blessed to have him as my Grandpa and he (and his dad) have given me a rich, rich heritage. Though he has gone through a lot, including losing his wife when my dad was young, he has never forsaken his family or the Lord, on whom he continues to lay his faith and trust to this day. My Grandpa is a very generous man and he has a big heart for missions. He is a great example and I think he has passed on some of his vision to me. God bless you Grandpa!

I believe when they put her in the ground
I think they buried part of me
Because I've been searching, I've been looking all around
But I cannot find the heart of me, the heart of me

So I'll put my fingers in this soil upon her grave
And I will plant for her a garden
And every flower, a reminder of her face
Will grow up graceful as a pardon

And all that grows is her story told
As life unfolds here before us
The peace I've found in this broken ground
I can see her in the harvest...of all that I have sown

Long before I was covered up in gray
Before the old had bent my bones
We grew our children in the red Georgia clay
They were our garden and our home

And all that grows is our story told
As life unfolds here before us
The peace we found in that broken ground
I can see them in the harvest...of all that I have sown

And when my life is done
I pray the kingdom come
And take me to Glory
It's living inside me
It was planted like a seed
All to tell a story

I believe when they put me in the ground
There will remain a part of me
Because I've been searching, and the joy that I have found
Is living in my family...it's all that I have sown

All That I Have Sown - Bebo

Happy Mothers Day!

Dedication:
To my Mom, who never forsook me and was always there for me.

Although I had already been alive for almost nine months, I didn’t know there was more to life than doing what I was doing, or wasn’t doing. I was perfectly content there, getting fed somehow, and not having to worry about when or what to eat. I also didn’t have to worry about clothes; their look, their size, or even the absence of them! I was stress-free, although I did notice things were getting increasingly crowded day by day…nothing to worry about now though. I was warm and relaxed, and undisturbed most of the time.
But sometimes I had suspicions. I had suspicions that everything does not and can not revolve around me. This would not have occurred to me, if it weren’t for the faint voices pulsating around me. I realized that there was a bigger picture, and if I wanted to see it, I would somehow need to “burst the bubble”, as it were, that I was in. I was comfortable, but I was restless and bored. I was warm, but I was helpless and lonely. I was in bondage and would somehow need to be set free. But before long, one, nonnegotiable truth became sure to me; that I had no strength on my own to accomplish this task, none at all.

Then one day, as I was swimming in my uncertainties, I felt a squeeze. It hurt, but I shrugged it off. Until another one came, and another, greater every time. Now they were coming at increasingly smaller intervals, pressing me, each time, against the walls of my preset standards. They forced me to submit to a larger veracity. I was then pressed into and immensely tight situation. Which hurt greatly, and I thank God I don’t remember it.

Then suddenly, as I was about to give up, something seemed to snap. I was liberated. I saw. I opened my mouth in astonished wonder, when unexpectedly, a gust of unrestrained nitrogen and oxygen poured into my tiny lungs. I felt like choking on this foreign substance, but when I tried to, another blast came gushing in. It seemed to permeate me, circulating deeper into me. I was enthralled by this and almost didn’t realize the reality of what now had to happen.

Before I could protest I was brought underneath a flowing mass of transparent matter. This was similar to what I had been used to, except that it refreshed itself constantly, it was alive. It felt so good to be underneath this flood when suddenly I was disturbed once again. I was flipped, squeezed, jolted, and jostled until every bit of me was as pure and clean as the water that washed me.

Then I heard. I heard a voice I recognized. It was clearer now than ever before. I wept as I fell into her arms. I cried because I couldn’t survive by myself.

The Peterbilt (Part 2)

In Part 2 here, I'll share with you the process of getting this from packaged parts to a working, usable machine. I see that not all of you are interested in this sort of thing and that's okay. But for those of you who are, I hope you enjoy it. I may even post a Part 3 to this, telling you about my first project and how it actually performed.

Putting our DIY system together was actually pretty foolproof. We mostly followed the instructions and manuals that came with the various hardware, especially the motherboard. I also printed a small article I found online about putting a system together. Here's a summary of how it went.

The case we got was somewhat toolless but not totally. We first screwed down the Mobo (standard ATX). Then we tackled the processor. Of course, being our first time ever installing a processor, it kind of felt like we were going to break it. It's such a small piece, yet it's likely the most expensive...so you know if you break it, that would be like really bad. The heatsink that came with the Core 2 already had a thermal compound applied to it, but I was advised not to use that and get a better product. So we scraped it off and cleaned it with rubbing alcohol. Then applied a bit of the Arctic Silver compound that I picked up at Fry's directly to the top of the processor. Putting the heatsink on the processor was another challenge, but we got it on there (they say if you didn't set the heatsink on properly, your processor could fry within ten seconds...so far, were okay).

The Ram was easy and so was the Video card. We only plugged in one of the Hard drives (the boot one) because the power supply didn't come with enough SATA power connectors. The Sony DVD drive went in smoothly.

As you can see, our case has some front ports, so we had to hook those up to the onboard connections. Everything found a place except a cable labeled "speaker", which is probably for the little beeps and warning messages (I think I hear those out the speakers in the monitor anyway). With the monitor hooked up, what's left to do but push the button. Woohu! Actually, I think we pushed the button even before we had monitor on just to make sure that.....well.....just to make sure.

Now turning the computer on with the monitor we were having some trouble getting into the bios. Oh, plug in the keyboard. Minor technicality. Having the keyboard plugged in helped and we entered the bios with the delete key. We did some minor changes and exited. If I remember correctly, we weren't able to get to the Windows installation screen because the drive configuration in the bios was set to "RAID" mode. Then switching to "IDE" mode seemed to get us going in the right direction. At the first screen it was telling us if we were going to install third party Raid drivers to press the F6 key. We knew we wanted to do Raid but didn't have power to the other drives yet, so we skipped that step, thinking there would be some way to get the Raid going later (there was an "Intel Matrix Storage Manager" Raid Driver floppy disc that came with our Mobo). Although I think installing the driver then to just have it ready wouldn't have hurt. Later we had to do a repair install of XP in order to install the Raid Driver floppy and get the Raid going (that seemed to be our only choice because we still weren't able to boot in "RAID" mode).

Anyway, we got the OS installed and were able to start using the computer. After the newegg order came, we got power to the drives. Things started to get a bit cramped in our mid tower when I was installing and plugging in the other items that came...but it works.

Setting up the Raid in the "Matrix Storage Manager" bios was supper easy after the driver was installed and the drives were formatted. I now have over 100GB of avi video on drive "R" (a 745GB Raid 0 drive labeled "VideoRaid"). Sweet.