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.

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)

• 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)

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!

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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.

Two months nail-biting free!

My newest intention is to start drinking more water. Sometime last year, I undertook an experiment wherein I drank the recommended number of ounces of water per day and I felt better, had more energy, and had fewer headaches. Unfortunately, I fell off the wagon. I really dislike drinking water—strange, I know, but I think it’s genetic. My mother hates to drink water too!—but I know I need to do it to keep my body in proper working order. So this week, the game is back on. It’s me versus 80 ounces of water a day. Wish me luck!

Some of the many photographs I took are featured in this slideshow. Flowers are such perfect subjects: they’re standing still and all you have to do is add a little sunlight to make them look gorgeous.

• Do a little—but just one area—at a time. Even I can’t clean for hours on end. Instead of picking up one item from the desk, making the bed, then skipping to the pantry, commit to doing one small area from start to finish. By doing the desk today and leaving the bed until tomorrow, you’ll feel much more accomplished when one area is completely clean and useable.
• Be ruthless. Don’t keep anything you “might need someday.” If it doesn’t fit, you’re not using it, or you can’t remember why you bought it in the first place, throw it out. Sure, months from now you may need to buy a new item, but in the meanwhile, you’ll be living with less stuff.
• Don’t put anything away until it’s ready to use. If that roll of twine is coming undone or your pants need to be hemmed, wind it up or get the alterations done before putting the item back in its place. That way, when you go to use something, it’s in proper working order and the task at hand is made much easier.
• Discard multiples. Who needs 100 pens? Or 60 pairs of shoes? Or a drawer full of twist-ties? Sometimes just a few is more than sufficient.
• Spice up your closet. Some herbs and spices such as cinnamon, pine, and lavender, can help protect your stored winter clothing from insects. Plus it’s a sensory treat when you unpack those items in the fall!

I’m always looking for brilliant tricks to streamline my cleaning process. What tips do you have to speed up your spring cleaning or to make it more fun?

This past year for Christmas, we gave my mother’s brother and his family a historical, educational day drip to the William McKinley Presidential Library and Museum and the National First Ladies’ Library. We’ve visited quite a few of the presidential libraries and memorials over the years and even the little ones who really couldn’t care less for history had a great time. My dad even put together a little quiz based on the song “The Ballad of Czolgosz” from Assassins for my cousins.

This year, we’re taking the same cousins to see the new The Lorax film followed by a visit to the Cleveland Botanical Gardens to see some real trees. I’ve actually lived in Cleveland my whole life and not visited the Gardens so I’m personally thrilled about that. I’m given to believe they’re a photographer’s paradise. It’s also a chance to get a little closer to my cousins, the oldest of which will be in high school next year (when did that happen‽). Plus, I hope the girls take away a little more respect for their environment as they grow up. Hooray for sneaky fun ways of including education into everyday activities. Here’s to the weekend!

(Photo credit: Collider.com)

I don’t like admitting those things. I was often in upper-level classes during school and I’m gifted in very visible ways. It’s difficult to expose my weaknesses when people assume I have my life together. But there it is. Trying new things doesn’t come easily to me and I’m a person who needs to stay for a while in one new interest or life stage before moving on to the next thing. My timeline doesn’t match up to how the world says I should do it and that’s okay.

I still struggle with judging my own life against others’, but I’m getting better. It can be tempting to make a list of all the things I haven’t done yet and match it against what I think my coworkers, or family, or friends are doing, but as I get older, I find that’s really not productive. In fact, sometimes it drives me to dig my heels in deeper and move even more slowly. I took a solo trip to Scotland last year to research my family history and sure, it was to an English-speaking country but it was a big step for me. For someone who doesn’t love to drive, spending a week crisscrossing the countryside on the “wrong” side of the road is quite the challenge! Other people may have done the same thing during their second year of college but my trip came just when I needed it to.

I may not be married yet, or own my first house, or have gone to graduate school, or have kids, but I’ll get there in the time that’s right for me.

Special thanks to Ashley from After Nine to Five for her encouragement to participate in Secret Week. While my secret may not be quite as serious as others’, this draft had been waiting to be posted for several months and this was just the impetus I needed to share it.