Last Friday was the opening day for a local festival. I am the sort of person who normally spends his time huddled in a dark corner whispering to himself and staring at the flickering light of his monitor. As far as social interaction, you could shovel a meal under the door and I’d pretty much be happy. Suffice to say, I don’t make it a habit of going to festivals. The idea of crowds and noise is decidedly unappealing. And who would want to spend good money so you could spend several hours facing a lot of noise and crowds? Not me.
But I was given the tickets for the entire family and there would be a large hot-air balloon launch and fireworks afterward. All this would have failed to move me but I thought of little kids who hadn’t seen a hot-air balloon launch, or a fireworks show up close. So, feeling twinges of guilt, I figured I ought to bestir myself and take the younger kids so that they could have the experience and some memories from it.
We went, and I endured it. The big disappointment was that the balloons did not launch. Too much wind, they said (after the fact). As a result we spent several hours standing around watching various balloons inflate (and getting hopeful) only for nothing to happen and the younger kids to begin to get completely bored out of their minds. Then all the balloons deflated and . . . nothing. What a bust.
The evening was saved from total disaster by the fireworks. The little boys enjoyed them so that, at least, was something. The fireworks show lasted probably no more than eight minutes. It was nice enough, but I couldn’t help be struck by how backwater it marked us. Fifteen minutes of merely nice fireworks and it was billed as the greatest display in the county all year. Yeah, that’s saying something all right. But I like being that backwater. It means the crowds actually weren’t that crushing at the festival, and traffic on the road wasn’t really out of the ordinary. You could never say that about a large city festival.
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Sunday I made ice cream for Lachlan’s birthday. Homemade ice cream is like the quintessence of summer. It tastes soooo good, but I am lazy and otherwise preoccupied most of the time so it doesn’t get made as often as it might. I am getting much better at the freezing process. I still think we have some learning as far as making the mixture. There are so many variations of flavors you have to make it more often to refine what is best.
As I am a man who doesn’t believe in skimping on the good stuff we make an almost (but I say not) obscene amount of ice cream. I bought two six quart ice cream machines and we use them both for a total of twelve quarts. We eat it until nearly bursting (and nearly sick, too).
Banana is an all time favorite. Blueberry is also good, and strawberry. We haven’t gone into a really expansive list of flavors, yet, but next I want to try butter almond or butter pecan. There are two basic recipes; one starts with an egg and flour custard-like base, the other method uses rennet tablets as the thickener. The rennet tablet methods seems to be much less well known. The egg custard method seems to give superior texture but since for most flavors that I like (such as butter almond and butter pecan) I prefer a more ice-milk texture, I favor the rennet tablet method slightly. However, if you are considering taking up ice cream making, the custard method gives much easier results, and it seems the majority of people prefer its more creamy texture, so I would suggest starting with the custard method and then if you would like to experiment more, try the rennet tablet method.
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