Mmm Ice Cream

Lets start by saying how nice and lovely and sweet Jan is. While I was in Spain, taking exams (better not talk about those grumble), he went to Aldi and bought me an Ice Cream Machine! Yesh! All for us! He told me he had bought me a surprise that day, and I wondered if it’d be the ice cream machine I had been showing him for the previous week. But I didn’t ask, wanted to be nice ;) In the end he told me, and I was already looking forward to make ice cream!

Fast forward to last friday (the previous was around the 20th June). I finally had time and peace to make the base of the ice cream. I decided on plain vanilla, because you can’t go wrong with vanilla ice cream. I followed the recipe that came with the ice cream machine, and got a nice vanilla custard that I let chill for a full day – while the ice cream machine bowl froze. Then I set up the machine, poured the custard, set it to “soft serve” and let it work for 30 minutes. Lovely result, a sweet intoxicating vanilla icecream. Simply delicious:

Ice Cream Ice Cream

You can see how creamy and soft it is in those pictures. And yes it has vanilla speks from using a real vanilla pod and scrapping all the seeds so the ice cream would taste like real vanilla and not those chemically loaded ones they sell out there.

Basic Vanilla Ice Cream

Ingredients:

  • 3,5 dl milk (I used half-skimmed)
  • 2 dl cream (I used 30% fat)
  • 1 vanilla pod
  • 150 grams sugar
  • 3 egg yolks

Make it:

  1. The day before you want to make ice cream – yes it’s time consuming in the waiting department, it is definitively no instant gratification here – make your custard, and put the ice cream machine bowl to freeze. You want a good 24 four hours of cold in that!
  2. In a deep sauce pan, heat up the milk and cream, with the vanilla pod. Make sure to slice it in half lenghtwise and scrap all the seeds. Once it’s reached boiling point, remove from the heat and let cool with the pod still inside.
  3. While the milk cools down, whisk the egg yolks with the sugar until foamy and creamy. When milk is warm, remove vanilla pod and add milk to eggs slowly while whisking non-stop to keep the custard from going, well, custardy and lumpy before time.
  4. When the eggs have been warmed up by part of the milk, add the egg mixture to the rest of the milk and heat the pan again. Do not let it boil and stirr constantly. When custard has thickened, about 10 minutes, remove from heat, pour in a bowl, and cover.
  5. Chill your custard to fridge temperature, ideally over night (that way the machine has less work to do!). Once everything is nicely cold and chilled, assemble your machine, pour the custard in, and let it do its thing for around 30 minutes.
  6. Dive in, enjoy.

Yield: One liter of frozen orgasmic vanilla ice cream.

Makeup? Really?

Yorkie recommended me some mineral makup when I was in the look for new makeup. Mine was old, and felt like a mask. Not really nice to wear. Anyway, she recommended me Everyday Minerals.

I checked them out, and found out they send you five samples for postage. So I tried them, because trying three foundations, a concealer and a blush for €3,20 ($4.95 for an international order) is damn cheap! I found my color, and didn’t feel the makeup while wearing it, which is a big plus. It also lasted all day long during a very warm day. I was sold.

I ordered a Personal Custom Kit (Full Sizes) and a Sample (so I could get a free blush because they had an offer). This was the 13th, I was afraid it wouldn’t arrive on time (that is, before friday), because I need-want it for a couple of weddings, and I’m leaving on a jet next monday and not coming back for about two months!

Towers of makup
Full SizesSample Sizes and Eyeshadow
If you want to see the full size pics, click on them and you’ll end in the gallery.
If you hoover over the pic there, you’ll see what each jar is.

Uh, yes, now my makeup bag is too small for these jars, dammit! I guess I’ll have to find something else *sigh* Wonder if I can find something tube-like where the jars fit and don’t get too shaked. A Pringles tube, maybe? But that won’t solve it for the samples and the eyeshadow.. mmmm *thinking hat on* I’ll keep you posted!

Brainz

Brainz are fuzzy. Brainz have melted.

Today was the last exam. 4.5 hours (with break, 5). They changed the format from previous years, and published a model of the new format online a few weeks ago. The exam today was based on that model, but they didn’t give time enough to solve all the problems. Not even knowing what to do and plugging everything in the HP50g to do math fast, there was not enough time at all.

But, it’s done. I will take at least a couple weeks off now. Don’t want to know anything about university till then.

Anerriphtho kybos (or Alea iacta est)

Goodbye Hair

Scared you there, eh?

I did not cut all my hair, just gave it a trim cause it was starting to get annoying (waist lenght!), and the ends looked dry and brittle. Right now it’s below my elbows, long hair, just not as long. Proof:

Long hair, pre cutLong hair, post cut
Pre-cut, it was waist lengthPost-cut, it’s elbow lenght, better

Much much better now!

One Down.

My brain feels like it wants to explode and then run out of my ears. Love the visual, eh?

The exam lasted about an hour more than I thought, because the teachers realized that it was harder than they initially thought, and added more time to try and let us imagine we can solve it. When they start adding time to an exam, bad juju.

Oh yes, also publications (aka, those paid to make copies) apparently can’t read and made 50 copies less of the exam than they asked. I don’t believe that. I mean, really, not seeing a 50 in there? I’m more in the “we never thought all 450 of the students would come and sit the exam so we asked for kess copies”.

The content of the exam was… rather not talk about it. I just want to forget about it, and start on the next one. Tired of it all. Burnt out. Meh.

Insert long string of very explicit very loud cursing here.

Exams

Suck.

These next three weeks are basically devoted to flattening my butt (more) studying (more) for exams, and then sitting those exams. And then hoping I have passed, because I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve sitted said exams, and it’s really getting on my nerves (and that’s being very very polite about it).

Anyway, I doubt I’ll post as much as I’ve posted these past weeks, not like it matters much, does it? I still have to post a couple pics of the last delicious meal cooked over at Jan’s. Maybe I’ll post some rant or so, when I need to yell or else my brain might implode-explode.

And I just noticed the spam counter has gone over the 20k mark. It only took 450 days… (No, I didn’t count them, I used this tool)

CBear’s Grand Opening

Friend CBear is opening her shop, Fuzzy Sheep Crafts. She’s selling hand made Burples, Bibs, Burp Clothes, Toys, etc, everything for the little ones in your life (-; Go and buy out her shop!

I’m telling you this, because she’s a dear friend, and because she deserves some good publicity out here in the internet, and also, she’s the first custom order of hand carved stamps made by me. Sneak peek:

Fuzzy Sheep Crafts - Sheep with Logo Fuzzy Sheep Crafts - Sheep with kids

So now, off you go to peek at her shop!

PS: If you want your own custom made hand carved stamp, contact me, we can arrange things. Still working on opening that shop of ours!

Spring!

Or that should it be, but it’s snowing outside, thick nice snowflakes. It won’t stick, cause it’s been raining all day. The garden is a swamp at the moment. No pics of the swamp, nor of the snow, sorry!

To cheer me up, I entered this contest that Cinnamongirl put out to celebrate spring. If you go there, make sure to tell her Diana sent you!