I'm Going To Be Obnoxious and Post A Little Bit Much Today
Well, my last post got deleted before I managed to post it, due to a badly managed backspace attempt, but the content still stands. First off, it is August and I have reliable Internet, so I've got to make an effort to be less stultifying than I've been for June and July. Therefore, I give you a Basil Ice Cream recipe, which is intensely hedonistic and also very interesting, because it turns several colors before it ends up at a very pretty green. (I also made matcha ice cream this summer, and was thinking about making a batch of almond-poppy ice cream before I left, but unfortunately my clandestine efforts to kidnap the ice cream machine were discovered and thwarted. Another time.)
Basil Ice Cream (adapted from a bigger recipe)
Ingredients
· 1 cups milk, divided
· 1/2 cup loosely packed fresh basil leaves
· 1 cups whipping cream
· 1/3 cup sugar, divided
· 4 egg yolks
· Garnish: fresh basil sprigs
Heat 1/2 cup of the milk, and add the basil leaves, which I recommend packing quite tightly because more basil flavor is better here. Cover and let stand for 20 minutes. Blend until smooth, and pour through the finest sieve you have, making sure none of the solids escape into the bowl. I used a slightly large-holed version my first time, and it came out sort of chewy really. Set this aside.
Heat the remaining 1/2 cup of milk and the whipping cream in a saucepan until bubbly, whereupon you remove it from the heat. Meanwhile, beat your egg yolks and your sugar until they become thick and pale, like really pretty icing. Do the hot milk/egg thing, add the basil mixture to the whole lot, and cook about 6 minutes until the mixture is thick and coats the spoon. Chill under cover - I recommend filling a mixing bowl with ice and setting the somewhat-cooled saucepan on it, because if you put it in the freezer to chill it gets grainy even if it is fast and if you put it in the fridge you get a warm fridge and a not materially colder mixture - and when it's nice and cool, put it in the ice cream maker and go watch Doctor Who or something else fun until the ice cream becomes ice cream.
In other news, I have a lot of unfinished fic decorating my desktop like so many document-icon-shaped accusing eyes. There's a Scarlet Pimpernel Tony/Armand fic, a due South RayK/Fraser fic (re: Fraser's obsession with Ray's tattoo), a Doctor Who/Being Human gen fic starring Mitchell-who-is-pretty-much-Rory, and two Doctor/Master fics, one of which involves them being stoned and one of which is my first attempt at porn - both are fairly angsty.
In addition to these, I have lurking on my desktop a small strange sci-fi fic involving bodyshare (thanks, Cliche Bingo), a rather silly paragraph about possession by a tripartite goddess, and one of my many attempts at getting the boys in the New Orleans Vengeance Spirit novel to write down their parts of the story.
We will not be mentioning the unfinished stories folder.
The point of the above is that if you comment with one of the stories I've mentioned above, or one of the Unmentionables if you're masterofmidgets and thus know what I've been procrastinating on, I will post a paragraph of it (or in the case of the tripartite goddess, the whole silly thing). It might be inspirational! It's certainly less boring than 'Painting my room again. Schoolbooks arrived. Mm, vegetables.'
Although speaking of painting my room, done done done done done. Finally.
Basil Ice Cream (adapted from a bigger recipe)
Ingredients
· 1 cups milk, divided
· 1/2 cup loosely packed fresh basil leaves
· 1 cups whipping cream
· 1/3 cup sugar, divided
· 4 egg yolks
· Garnish: fresh basil sprigs
Heat 1/2 cup of the milk, and add the basil leaves, which I recommend packing quite tightly because more basil flavor is better here. Cover and let stand for 20 minutes. Blend until smooth, and pour through the finest sieve you have, making sure none of the solids escape into the bowl. I used a slightly large-holed version my first time, and it came out sort of chewy really. Set this aside.
Heat the remaining 1/2 cup of milk and the whipping cream in a saucepan until bubbly, whereupon you remove it from the heat. Meanwhile, beat your egg yolks and your sugar until they become thick and pale, like really pretty icing. Do the hot milk/egg thing, add the basil mixture to the whole lot, and cook about 6 minutes until the mixture is thick and coats the spoon. Chill under cover - I recommend filling a mixing bowl with ice and setting the somewhat-cooled saucepan on it, because if you put it in the freezer to chill it gets grainy even if it is fast and if you put it in the fridge you get a warm fridge and a not materially colder mixture - and when it's nice and cool, put it in the ice cream maker and go watch Doctor Who or something else fun until the ice cream becomes ice cream.
In other news, I have a lot of unfinished fic decorating my desktop like so many document-icon-shaped accusing eyes. There's a Scarlet Pimpernel Tony/Armand fic, a due South RayK/Fraser fic (re: Fraser's obsession with Ray's tattoo), a Doctor Who/Being Human gen fic starring Mitchell-who-is-pretty-much-Rory, and two Doctor/Master fics, one of which involves them being stoned and one of which is my first attempt at porn - both are fairly angsty.
In addition to these, I have lurking on my desktop a small strange sci-fi fic involving bodyshare (thanks, Cliche Bingo), a rather silly paragraph about possession by a tripartite goddess, and one of my many attempts at getting the boys in the New Orleans Vengeance Spirit novel to write down their parts of the story.
We will not be mentioning the unfinished stories folder.
The point of the above is that if you comment with one of the stories I've mentioned above, or one of the Unmentionables if you're masterofmidgets and thus know what I've been procrastinating on, I will post a paragraph of it (or in the case of the tripartite goddess, the whole silly thing). It might be inspirational! It's certainly less boring than 'Painting my room again. Schoolbooks arrived. Mm, vegetables.'
Although speaking of painting my room, done done done done done. Finally.