MapleEngineer

This is a picture of the side of my market ice cream freezer. It's a bar fridge sized vertical freezer that I put in the back of my van and run off the van's AC power to get to market then switch over to a small, very quiet generator at market. These cards have magnetic strips on the back so they stick to the freezer and I can move them to the back when a flavour sells out.

Most of our ice cream starts with the same vanilla base recipe.

RECIPE

1 L (4 cups) table (10%) cream (Half and Half in the US)

300 g (1 1/2 cup) granulated sugar

500 ml (2 cups) whipping (35%) cream

15 ml (1 tablespoon) vanilla extract

I add 250 ml to 500 ml of whatever the addition is. (See NOTE 1)

PROCESS

Pour the 10% cream into a 2 L (8 cup) container.

Add the sugar and stir until the sugar is completely dissolved. (See NOTE 2)

Add the 35% cream and vanilla extract and stir to mix.

Cover the container and put it into the fridge to chill or add it directly to your machine.

NOTE 1: If I'm using (Canadian) Smarties (like M&Ms but better) I use less because they pack very densely. If I'm adding nuts or something that packs more loosely I use more. When I'm making raspberry or blackberry or other fruit ice cream I use about 300 ml of mascerated berries (add about 12.5 g (1 tablespoon) of granulated sugar to the berries then mash them coarsely with a fork. Set them aside for 30 minutes or so to mascerate.) If you're using raspberries or blackberries or any other berries in the family always add them at the very end, just before the ice cream is finished or better, stir them in by hand after the ice cream is frozen. Berries in the family will produce very airy, almost foamy ice cream if added at the beginning.

NOTE 2: The sugar will not dissolve easily in the 35% cream or a mix of the 35% cream and 10% cream. It's much easier to dissolve it in the 10% cream then to add the 35% cream once it's dissolved.

This is a home made 18% milk fat ice cream with cinnamon and cayenne. It starts as a rich, creamy chocolate ice cream with a hit of cinnamon then it brings the burn.

The is a great ice cream for people who want a bit of pain with their pleasure.

Aztec Chocolate Ice Cream

INGREDIENTS

500 ml (2 cups) whipping cream (35%)

150 g (1 1/2 cup) granulated sugar

50 g (6 tablespoons) unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder

1 1/4 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1/8 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons cayenne powder (see NOTE)

85 g (3 ounces) semisweet or bittersweet chocolate, chopped

15 ml (1 tablespoon)vanilla extract

1 L (4 cups) table cream (10%) (Half and Half in the US)

PROCESS

Put the whipping cream, sugar, cocoa, cinnamon, salt, and chili powder in a pot.

Heat over medium heat whisking constantly. It will begin to foam up as it begins to boil. Turn the heat off immediately.

Add the chocolate and stir until it's completely melted.

Add the vanilla then slowly add the 10% cream while stirring (or whisking.)

Put in the fridge for a couple of hours until well chilled.

Put it in your ice cream machine and run it until it's frozen.

Get a bowl, a spoon, and a Kleenex and you're ready for a delicious ice cream experience.

P.S. The tissue is for your runny nose.

NOTE: 2 teaspoons gives this ice cream a nice little burn. You can use more or less to get the heat level you want.

My 15 year old son made this thin pen from a figured maple blank we got from KJP Select Hardwoods. These very skinny pens are apparently more difficult to turn especially with figured woods which tend to catch and tear out. He gave me this one for Christmas last year. It's been sitting on my desk being used on an almost daily basis since then.

My 15 year old son made this pen using an African Blackwood blank we bought at KJP Select Hardwoods. I love the contrast betwen the naturally black wood and the nickel mechanics.

We were at KJP yesterday and I bought another blank for him.

My 15 year old son made this pen. The wood is reclaimed charred oak from a Jack Daniels whiskey barrel. He gave me this pen for my birthday and it is my new daily driver. It's a nice size and weight and it writes beautifully.

My boys were having a snuggle nap on the couch. I took a couple of pictures of them because they were cute then the big guy went for a BIG yawn. He's over 10 kg of cat and just over 10 years old. The smaller guy is around 5 kg and 6 years old. The big guy was a ditch kitten that someone tossed in the ditch in front of our house. We caught him and took him in. The next year someone ditched another kitten in front of our house and we took him in. Unfortunately, the second one slipped out the door and disappeared never to be seen again. The big guy was devistated. We decided to get him a companion and adopted the smaller guy from a cat rescue. They are abslutely inseparable.

Are they food? I dunno. You can eat them.

These are the Jumbo Snax version of Froot Loops which I just found out existed. I live in Ontario so I drove across to New York to buy a couple of boxes of the little snack packs of these things. They're everything you would expect from jumbo Froot Loops. They're about the size of a quarter.

AA battery for scale.

I grab a pack and munch on them while I'm on boring Zoom meetings. They have very little nutritional value but they have huge entertainment value. They're sweet and crunchy.

I used to post quite actively in r/soapmaking since, well, I'm a soap maker.

My wife and I raised the pigs, rendered the lard, and mixed it with other oils and lye to make soap. You know, soap making.

r/soapmaking was filled with people who bought soap that other people made, melted it, mix in perfume and glitter, poured it into moulds, and sold it. I pointed out that they weren't actually making soap but were doing arts and crafts with soap that other people make.

They set upon my like a bunch of extremist vegans at a BBQ. I said that there wasn't anything wrong with doing soap arts and crafts but that it wasn't really soap making since they didn't actually make soap.

They called me arrogant for not accepting that not making soap was soap making and banned me. I can't remember whether it was permanent or temporary but I never went back.

I've written about this a few times. I was banned from r/republican for pointing out that the article that someone posted claiming that the DOJ had found evidence of massive fraud in Georgia contradicted the Republican AG, the DOJ, the Republican Governor of Georgia, the Republican Secretary of State of Georgia, the Republican AG of Georgia, and Georgia election officials and written by a Trumpist political shill.

Then the stories started coming out that confirmed what I said. I asked if they would reconsider the ban since it turned out that I what I had said was true. They told me that they would not because I was trolling. I pointed out that simply posting the truth was not trolling. They muted me for 30 days.

Then John Eastman was charged with being that shill. I once again asked if they would reconsider the ban since it was now even more clear that what I had said was true and not trolling. They muted me for 30 days.

When John Eastman was recently disbarred for being that shill I once again asked if they would reconsider the ban since not only was it obvious that what I posted was true but that Easteman had been disbarred because of the actions that I commented about. They muted me for 30 days and told me that if I didn't stop writing to them they would tell their mommies (or maybe it was report me to the admins, I can't remember.)

Never speak truth into an echo bunker.

Someone asked about feeding their dog, a feculative carnivore, a vegan diet. The response was overwhelmingly, "Don't, it's animal abuse". In fact, that was my exact response. I posted links to several articles explaining that it's very difficult to feed a feculative carnivore, like a dog, a balanced diet feeding them only vegan.

They didn't like the word, "force" as in, "forcing a dog to eat vegan." When I asked how not giving the dog a choice was not forcing their false moreal supperiority on an animal without other options I didn't get an answer. I also suggested giving the dog a choice between meat and kibble or even a feculative carnivore kibble versus a vegan kibble so they weren't forcing the dog to eat vegan. That wasn't popular either.

So...I'm banned from c/vegan. My life will be richer for it.

EDIT: Some of this conversation happened with individuals after the mods hermetically sealed the echo bunker by removing all non-fawningly supportive replies and banning everyone who didn't fawn positively.

I looked online to see if anyone made a treble using circle hooks but couldn't find any. I decided to make one myself to give it a try. I used a stainless steel treble that I cut the hooks off of as the core and the eye and three 5/0 octopus circles that I cut the eyes off as the hooks.

My thought was that I would hook less tongues and gills and have less multi-hook hookups with circles. It's dressed with a core of red bucktail with a skirt of yellow and stripes of brown.

I will attach this to a 1 oz nickel plated marine brass inline spinner and cast and burn for northern pike and other toothy predators.

If I end up with a multi-hook hookup I will know the experiment failed and I will cut the hooks to remove it. If I get hits and no hookups I'll know the experiment failed and I'll toss it in my box to be rehooked with a normal dressed treble and switch to something else for the day.

Given that the hooks are lashed and not braised I don't expect this thing to last more than two or three strikes. A normal bucktail treble ends up pretty chewed up and bare after four or five hookups.

If this thing works (I don't expect it to) I may braze two or three to continue the experiment.