For Christmas, my aunt and uncle gave me an ice cream maker. Now, I definitely enjoy cooking but I hesitate to collect tools for cooking and baking projects I’m just not going to undertake that often and I honestly considered taking it back to the store and exchanging it for something more practical. I am so glad I didn’t. So far, I’ve made six batches of delicious, homemade ice cream and now that it’s getting to the warmer months, I’m sure that there will be more on the way.

The beauty of the whole thing is that as long as you have space to store the ice cream maker’s bowl in the freezer until you need it, the process takes no more than five ingredients and 20 minutes from quart of half-and-half to soft serve. It’s a great project for kids, an impressive treat for adults, and so customizable.

I’ve made mint chocolate chip, lemon custard with a raspberry swirl, chocolate, Oreo, and red raspberry sorbet but, believe it or not, the best batch I’ve made was this vanilla recipe which came from the personal, 1780s journal of Thomas Jefferson and was published on The Kitchn. It’s absolutely fantastic.

Thomas Jefferson’s Vanilla Custard

makes about 1 quart

Ingredients

3 yolks of eggs
1/4 lb sugar (5/8 cups)
2 pints cream or half-and-half
1 vanilla bean

Directions

1. Mix the yolks and sugar together.
2. Put the cream or half-and-half in a heavy pan over medium heat.
3. Cut open the vanilla bean, scrape out the seeds, and put the seeds and the pod into the cream.
4. Heat until nearly boiling. Take it off and pour it gently into the mixture of eggs and sugar. Stir well.
5. Put the mixture back over medium heat and bring just to a boil.
6. Pour into a bowl and cover the custard with plastic wrap so that it doesn’t form a skin. Chill overnight.
7. Churn in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s directions.

If you’d like to add any mix-ins, toss them in right at the end of the churn. It’s absolutely delicious in the soft serve stage but you can also pack it into a container and freeze for up to a week.

Over the weekend, I took my parents to see Michael Flatley’s Lord of the Dance, the successful Irish step dancing show, during its recent tour stop in Cleveland. The show follows a loose—and I do mean loose—story based on the Lord of the Dance and his epic battle against Don Dorcha, the dark rival through dance, acting, and a bit of Irish fiddle and vocal solos. The story doesn’t hold together very well, the performers who aren’t dancers are mediocre at best, and the lasers and LED “sets” are pretty simple for $60 per ticket, but most of that doesn’t matter if you think of the whole thing as a vehicle for the fast-paced Irish stepdancing. I imagine it would be pretty difficult for dancers of any caliber to perform two straight hours of that type of dance so I accept the other “stuff” as the glue to get from one number to another.

The dancer playing the Lord in our particular production was Bobby Hodges (pictured above), a 21-year-old English dancer who joined the troupe at age 18. Within his first year, he scored the role of the Lord and boy, does he ever deserve it. Hodges is a spectacular dancer, highly energetic, and breathed life into what can be a very stagnant show. Ciaran Plummer, his dark counterpart, was also excellent, and the inevitable “duel” between the two was one of the highlights of the performance.

The fiddlers and vocalist portraying Erin the Goddess were significantly less enjoyable. None of the three were spectacular entertainers and their performance lacked in energy and genuine enthusiasm. Some of this may have been due to the fact that we attended a matinée which always seem to have casts who are less into it, but they still didn’t come close to being the best part of the show.

On the whole, Lord of the Dance is something akin to Vegas-style spectacles, highly commercialized and not always genuine. It also feels way overpriced given that most of us would be happy to pass on more than half of what was presented (singing, fiddling, and the slower solo dance numbers) and there wasn’t even so much as a live instrumentalist in the house outside of the two fiddlers. That said, I could have watched three hours of the ensemble stepdance numbers—they’re fast, fun, and the dancers are clearly masters of their craft. I will also say that I’m incredibly impressed that Michael Flatley took such a niche style of dance and gave it international demand; I can’t think of any other regional style of dance which is as well known or commands such a high ticket price from the average person.

So, if you’re able to get a deal on a ticket, Michael Flatley’s Lord of the Dance is worth going to, but if not, save the dollars and head to a local Irish or Scottish arts festival this summer and catch some of the amateur stepdancing or Highland dancing instead. You’ll likely enjoy it as much, get a more authentic Irish or Scottish experience, and support some of the new dancers on the scene as well.

(Photo credit: Orlando Sentinel)

Before spring break our Doctor Who ExCo discussed the responsibility of the author, that is, what responsibility, if any, a writer or director has on making sure his or her works are socially responsible. In light of the news that Jenna-Louise Coleman had just been announced as Eleven’s newest companion to join next season, we assigned a little thought experiment in which students were given a few minutes to come up with characteristics which their “ideal companion” would have, those which they felt were underrepresented among the companions on Doctor Who. Below is the list of characteristics they came up with. Some are Doctor Who-specific but many are more general and speak for themselves in terms of the need for more diversity on television both in the types of actors cast as well as the characters they play.

• From the past
• Curvy
• Flirty; a female version of Captain Jack Harkness
• Familial relationship with the Doctor as opposed to a sexual or romantic one
• Have a pet — after class, Jonas and I discussed how awesome it would be for a companion to bring her pet parrot along for the ride and how heart wrenching it would be for, on the last trip with the Doctor, for said bird to mimic the TARDIS noise or perhaps the Doctor’s catchphrase
• Regeneration of Jenny
• Religiously diverse
• More intelligent and able to challenge things the Doctor suggests
• Openly LGBTQ
• Indian
• Asian
• Intentionally mischievous
• Roma/Traveller — this potentially has significant social value among European audiences where discrimination against these communities is high
• More proactive, aggressive
• Writes down, photographs, paints or otherwise documents his or her travels with the Doctor
• More willing to call the Doctor out when he’s wrong
• Travels with the Doctor for reasons other than 1) he’s hot, witty, and brilliant or 2) to “see all of time and space”

(Photo credit: Fanpop)

I, being the geeky girl that I am, was really fascinated by the Use This interviews wherein designers, developers and writers detail the hardware and software they use on a daily basis. I’m not nearly as famous or influential but if you’re interested in the things I use, read on.

Who are you?

I’m just going to skip this part ’cause I’m not famous or anything. Suffice it to say I do a lot of graphic design work, primarily of the print variety. I also spend a lot of time organizing data for the community theatre I volunteer with which means I make lots of forms, keep lots of spreadsheets, and actually (yes, in 2012) print lots of things onto actual trees.

What hardware are you using?

My personal Mac of choice is a 13″ MacBook Pro and is about three years old. At home, it’s connected to an ancient Cinema Display which, while old, serves me just fine. At work, I use a mid-2010 27″ iMac but have a 15″ MacBook Pro for use when I travel or give presentations. I mouse using an older Wacom Graphire on my desktop; mice, even the Magic Mouse, exacerbates my wrist troubles. I also have a new iPad which I primarily use for reading and low-key work like note taking. My previous iPad didn’t have the ability to be connected to an external display so I look forward to seeing whether I do more of that with the iPad as opposed to a laptop with this new model.

The iPhone 4S is my life. It’s presently my favorite device and I wish I could figure out how to make it my primary machine. I’m a designer though, and I do actually like typing on a physical keyboard, so that’s not going to actually happen, but in all other respects it’s incredible. It’s fast, the display is brilliant, and I’m so much more productive now that my calendar is in my pocket at all times.

My home printer is a Samsung CLP-315 color laser. Due to my work with the theatre, I do a lot of printing because often we don’t have the budget for commercial print jobs.

I take photos with a Canon Rebel XSi with its standard lens for close and portrait shots and use a Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM lens for distance. I know a lot of people have been moving increasingly to their iPhones as their primary cameras but I just don’t get the kind of control I want from it. Unless I know a photo is destined for social media, I don’t use my phone.

And what software?

I use the CS5 Design Standard for my creative work, primarily Photoshop and InDesign; I don’t do much illustration but I spend a lot of time laying out documents for print and editing photos for those documents. For less intensive projects which aren’t destined for a commercial print shop, I use Pages. It’s got the most killer gridline system I’ve ever used and is an absolute dream when it comes to inserting and modifying images. I love Coda for any web work I do for my actual day job and the theatre.

For media consumption—and I do a lot of that—I prefer Reeder, Tweetbot, and Instapaper for reading, tweeting, and later-reading respectively. My daily news comes primarily through blogs, newspaper websites, and Twitter, and these tools help me control the flow. I read actual books using the Kindle app, primarily because books from Amazon are almost always cheaper than their iBooks counterpart, not because I necessarily love it more. Sharing things I read and communicating with my friends is done through Cloud and Messages.

I take notes with Pad & Quill, keep my schedule in iCal, my to-dos in Things, and my browser of choice is Safari. I would probably die if Dropbox didn’t exist because keeping my life in order across multiple machines is critical. Recipes live in MacGourmet and I use my iPad in the kitchen. Awaken gets me up every morning.

My favorite game is Puzzlejuice although I also have a Wii, Xbox 360 and Kinect, and DS Lite. I blame previous boyfriends for getting me on the Nintendo bandwagon as my console of choice; while the Kinect has been fun, the interface on the 360 is the most awful thing I’ve ever used since I ditched my last Windows machine. My cats like to play Cat Fishing 2 and Paint for Cats.

What would be your dream setup?

The tools I have now really meet my needs. The laptop-connected-to-a-display setup gives me a lot of power and flexibility and I’ve got the mobile tools to take my tech with me. Honestly, the thing I want most in my day job is a window to the outdoors!

I bought my father a wine tasting experience from the American Wine School for Christmas and we finally redeemed it this week. The tasting was held at Lago, one of my dad’s favorite restaurants in Tremont, a neighborhood in Cleveland.

View Larger Map

We enjoyed six Spanish wines and were instructed on the differences between various regions and types. Now, I’m not any kind of wine snob—I’m definitely a $15 per bottle and under kind of girl—but it was extremely helpful to walk through the various Spanish classifications for wine so that I’m better prepared when I stop into a wine shop next time. I may still choose the under $15 bottle, but at least I’ll know what I’m getting.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Spanish wine, here’s a crash course: like French wine, Spanish wines aren’t labelled with the type of grape in the bottle but rather 1) the region where the wine was made and 2) how long it was aged.

The regions you want to pay special attention to are the  Denominación de Origen (DO) and the Denominación de Origen Calificada (DOCa). Anything else and you’re getting a smaller region, most likely lower-quality wine. As far as the aging goes, which one you’ll want to choose is all up to personal preference, but the three main words you’ll be looking for are Crianza, Reserva, and Gran Reserva which are aged for two, three, and five years for reds and one, two, and four years for whites respectively.

I probably won’t shell out the full price for additional wine courses—I was lucky to get this one through Groupon—but I am definitely going to do a little bit of reading on French, Italian, and American wines to see whether those countries also have similar indicators I can be looking for to make better-educated wine purchases in the future.