First homemade ice cream: Hazelnut Chocolate Chip

Even though I received a Cuisinart ice cream maker for my birthday, I chose PLAY AND FREEZE™ ice cream recipes because there's no eggs or cooking of custard. And they use half and half, which thrills me because I recently discovered Oak Farms' Half & Half doesn't contain carrageenan, which causes me severe pain and inflammation of my lower intestine - that's why I asked for an ice cream maker, because it's near impossible to find ice cream without the dreaded seaweed (carrageenan).

I had the ingredients on hand to make the Hazelnut Chip ice cream; I put everything but the chips into a 2 quart measuring cup and whisked it, then poured it into my ice cream maker. After twenty minutes, I poured in the chocolate chips and ran it for five more minutes.

Hazelnut Chip
1 pint of Half & Half
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/3 cup sugar
2 tablespoons of Hazelnut Syrup (used to flavor lattes) - I used Torani
2 tablespoons chocolate chips

Because it's been almost two years since I've enjoyed ice cream, we finished the entire batch in one sitting! I didn't freeze it afterwards - the ice cream was like soft serve. I'm thinking of adding a small package of chopped Ferrero Rocher candies to it, or making a Nutella sauce next time.

I'm very pleased neither of us missed the eggs, because I know I'd make less ice cream in the future if I always had to cook custard first.

Here's some flavors we're wanting to try next:

• Key Lime with broken Graham crackers (DH)
  
• Pumpkin with broken gingersnaps or candied pecans and maple sauce
  
• Ginger with chai-granola
• Maple Caramel Swirl with apple-raisin sauce and cinnamon croutons
• Carrot Cake Ice Cream
  
• Dark chocolate with bananas and strawberries
• Chocolate with Andes candies (DH)
  
• Not sure it'll work, but I'm going to try soaking a few Celestial Seasonings Bengal Tea bags in the Half and Half overnight, then swirl in marmalade and chopped orange candies in the last 5 minutes.

DH is shopping right now, so I texted him a list of ingredients to make some of the above flavors. OMG I forgot to add the Nutella, so I had to call him ROFL

Happy Birthday to me! I'm going gray!

DH gave me a FroYo maker that doesn't require ice and rock salt -- I haven't been able to eat ice cream/frozen yogurt since discovering that carrageenan was causing my painful IBS. I can use Nido powdered milk to make yogurt or kefir. I've also found that Oak Farms Half and Half doesn't have the dreaded carrageenan either, yay!

Despite using the maximum dosage of Gray Magic, and leaving the dye in my hair the maximum time, my grays only hold the color for about two weeks, then fade to orange, ewww! I won't lighten my overall color because curly hair is often more prone to damage. DH has been asking me to let my hair go gray for years, then while visiting my mother, she told me my faded orange hair wasn't attractive, to go natural! So I've finally decided to try to become a silver fox ^_^

Due to our DSL modem acting flaky the last few days, I wasn't able to get my photos submitted in time for Going Gray Looking Great's "newbie classes" that helps people like me transition from dyed hair to a silver fox (one can hope LOL). So I'll transition to silver on my own instead.


I broke down and dyed my hair after this photo. My curls grew longer and were looking disheveled, so I made my first appointment with a curl specialist in Clear Lake, Houston. She's thinking it'll take at least 3 more haircuts before the dyed hair is gone.

My neck is VERY happy without all that extra insulation, being that we're still suffering our record-breaking heat spell.

Fire photo (blogginng w/ pics!)

Being frugal often means work-arounds, which made blogging with pics a bit of a challenge. The best solution for me - frugal+easy - meant buying a BlueTooth dongle for around 10USD. Now I'm seeing how my 3G phone's hi-res pics turn out; here's a pic of my backyard fire that got pretty close to a corner of our house (house is shown in upper-right corner):