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Quick French Vanilla Ice Cream

And a maple ice cream free­bie at the end.

So, I had a dilemma. We all agreed that tonight was a per­fect night for home-made ice cream, but the forces of evil were against us. First, we had very lit­tle time; it was dan­ger­ously close to bed­time. Thus cooked recipes, or recipes that needed cure time, were out. Sec­ond, raw-egg recipes were ruled out because of the recent sal­mo­nella out­break; I wanted to play it safe. Finally, I’m aller­gic to “quick recipes” that sac­ri­fice taste and tex­ture for speed. This needed to be good.

I couldn’t find any recipes that met my qual­i­fi­ca­tions, so I threw some ingre­di­ents in a bowl, Jon­agold whisked them up, and into the churn they went. Coly How, the result was fantastic.

Con­tin­ued…

Posted in Recipes.


Wannabe cool” Christianity

Hipster ChristianityIn case you haven’t seen it yet, read “The Per­ils of ‘Wannabe Cool’ Chris­tian­ity” in, of all places, the Wall Street Journal.

If we are inter­ested in Chris­tian­ity in any sort of seri­ous way, it is not because it’s easy or trendy or pop­u­lar. It’s because Jesus him­self is appeal­ing, and what he says rings true. It’s because the world we inhabit is utterly phony, ephemeral, nar­cis­sis­tic, image-obsessed and sex-drenched—and we want an alter­na­tive. It’s not because we want more of the same.

It’s from the author of the new Hip­ster Chris­tian­ity: when church and cool col­lide. Which I haven’t read yet, but sounds inter­est­ing. He also has a blog (mostly to pro­mote the book).

Posted in Theology.


Those amazing snickerdoodles. (Don’t snicker.)

Today I made some fan­tas­ti­cally deli­cious shred­ded chicken bar­be­cue, and it was easy as tic-tac-toe. But that’s not what I’m here to dis­cuss … today it’s a twofer, with Snick­er­doo­dle cook­ies and Snick­er­doo­dle milkshakes.

The snick­er­doo­dle cook­ies are a recipe I’ve been work­ing on for a month or two and I think it’s just about per­fect. Last night, one of my nephews declared (loudly) that a girl at school brings in snick­er­doo­dles to buy votes, and they are sup­posed to be the best in the world. But, he said, mine are ten times bet­ter than hers. Ten times! That’s aston­ish­ing. If you haven’t watched Charles Eames’ clas­sic Pow­ers of Ten, then you really should — if for no other rea­son than to hear that really crazy Ham­mond organ sound­track. But I digress; ten times bet­ter than hers. How­ever, you should under­stand that this bit of hyper­bole is com­ing from some­one who is pro­lific in their exag­ger­a­tive dis­course, so take it for what it’s worth. But they are good, in any case. Con­tin­ued…

Posted in Recipes.


Not Yo’ Mama’s Banana Pudding

Not Yo' Mama's Banana PuddingThis is a Paula Deen recipe, which isn’t sur­pris­ing given that it’s com­pletely com­posed of fat and sugar. It’s crazily easy. Paula’s orig­i­nal is a teeny bit sim­pler, but my ver­sion tastes better.

Con­tin­ued…

Posted in Recipes.


The Morality of Music and Art

Highway to Hell at Newspring ChurchMusic has been a hot topic for cen­turies, and I cer­tainly don’t have the answers. How­ever, I’d like to add a point to the dis­cus­sion: a com­par­i­son between the moral­ity of music and that of art.

Plato wrote, “The ways of poetry and music are not changed any­where with­out change in the most impor­tant laws of the city.”

Music, for Plato, was not a neu­tral amuse­ment. It could express and encour­age virtue—nobility, dig­nity, tem­per­ance, chastity. But it could also express and encour­age vice—sensuality, bel­liger­ence, indis­ci­pline” [Amer­i­can Spec­ta­tor].

Con­tin­ued…

Posted in Art & Design, Theology.


Jonathan’s Favorite White Broccoli Pizza

White Broccoli PizzaUpon tast­ing this, Jonathan informed me that I must never make any other type of pizza again.


Ingre­di­ents (makes 2 pizzas)

Crust:

  • 2 1/4 tea­spoons active dry yeast
  • 1/2 tea­spoon brown sugar
  • 1 1/2 cups warm water (110 degrees F)
  • 1 tea­spoon salt
  • 2 table­spoons olive oil
  • 3 1/3 cups all-purpose flour

White sauce:

  • 4 table­spoons olive oil
  • 1 small yel­low sweet onion (Vidalia!), diced
  • 4 cloves gar­lic, minced
  • 1/2 cup heavy cream
  • 1 tea­spoon minced fresh thyme or marjoram
  • Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Con­tin­ued…

Posted in Recipes.


Silk-transfer egg decorating

I want to try this.

Posted in Art & Design.


I don’t do bunnies

And I really don’t do those pop­u­lar “cute” sites that are just lines of sac­cha­rine pho­tos. But these aren’t bun­nies; they are Rab­bit Over­lords of Doom. And the pho­tos are more fright­en­ing than they are saccharine.

Con­tin­ued…

Posted in Miscellaneous.


These chocolate chip cookies are better than yours.

cookies

These choco­late chip cook­ies are bet­ter than yours.

I’m almost happy with this recipe. It gets slightly bet­ter each time, and I’ll tweak the recipe as I make refinements.

Prep time: 3 weeks, give or take 3 weeks.

INGREDIENTS

  • 1 cup real but­ter (see note 1 below)
  • 1/4 cup honey, warmed (see note 2 below)
  • 2 eggs
  • 3 TABLE­spoons vanilla extract, the real stuff (see note 3 below)
  • 1 cup packed brown sugar
  • 1 cup white sugar (see note 4 below)
  • 1 tea­spoon bak­ing soda
  • 1/2 tea­spoon salt
  • 3−3÷4 cups all-purpose flour
  • 2 cups Ghi­rardelli 60% cacao bit­ter­sweet choco­late chips (see note 5 below)
  • 1 cup milk choco­late chips

Con­tin­ued…

Posted in Recipes.


To see perfection: Fabergé

Yes­ter­day morn­ing I had the oppor­tu­nity to inspect a piece of gen­uine Fabergé from the late Impe­r­ial period, in prepa­ra­tion for a future exhi­bi­tion on which I have the priv­i­lege of work­ing. The cura­tor first showed me a piece that is claimed to be Fabergé; it was inter­est­ing, though not par­tic­u­larly well made, and I was a lit­tle dis­ap­pointed. As I told him, I could have made that! He saved the best for last, how­ever, and when he pulled out an amaz­ing lit­tle jade let­ter opener my brain shot through the back of my roof. (Of course that doesn’t make sense. It didn’t to me, either.)

Not the one I saw.

There aren’t many times in a life that your eyes land on some­thing and have instant com­pre­hen­sion that you are look­ing at some­thing spe­cial. This tiny piece of per­fec­tion, a lit­tle bun­dle of rocks and met­als and minis­cule mol­lusk secre­tions, was like that.

It prob­a­bly wouldn’t have been like that a few years ago, before I started jewelry-work. Now I know what it takes to cast and braze and engrave and repoussé, and I’m not very good at it. I’ve seen a lot of jew­elry from peo­ple bet­ter than me, too. But it’s a lit­tle like a magic trick: when you know the trick, it’s not so magical.

I don’t know Fabergé’s tricks, though, and the result is sim­ply mag­i­cal. I’m amazed and a lit­tle dumb­founded, which is why it took me more than 24 hours just to sput­ter out a post about it. A few things are clear: he hired the best in each branch of the busi­ness, and divided the work among each expert. So the guil­loché was done by the best guilloché-man he could find, and the sub­se­quent enamel by the best enam­eler, and so on. With the bud­get to hire the best in the world, hire as many of them as he needed, and take as much time as required to cre­ate per­fec­tion, the result is some­thing that no sin­gle mas­ter could create.

The letter-opener is quite sim­i­lar to the probable-Fabergé let­ter opener listed at All That Glit­ters and pic­tured left. Sorry I don’t have a pic­ture of the one I saw, but their piece is rep­re­sen­ta­tive. Unlike the one I saw their opener has a bust at the top, which appears awk­ward in com­par­i­son. But a few char­ac­ter­is­tics are extremely close: the jade blade is vir­tu­ally iden­ti­cal, the orna­men­ta­tion on the blade, the sig­na­ture guil­loché and over­laid metal. My ver­sion was more finely detailed, with strands of seed pearls and twisted wire, more carved appliqué, and flawlessly-implemented cus­tom alloyed gold to cre­ate a range of col­ors. Then very care­fully added pati­nas — just a lit­tle, just here and not there, per­fect control.

Con­tin­ued…

Posted in Art & Design.

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