Ice Cream Overflow

BEWARE: If you put too much ice cream into an ice cream maker it will magically expand while churning and spill everywhere! Here's the story.

Since leaving BYU, David and I have been missing some of our favorite treats: Cookies and Cream Milk, Graham Canyon ice cream, and mint brownies.

We made mint brownies a while ago (which made it on the blog here), and now we decided it was time to try making Graham Canyon ice cream. I saw a post of a copycat graham canyon recipe on someone's blog, and the ice cream looked really watery, so in an attempt to avoid that we made the most delicious, decadent, custard ice cream and I can't get enough.

But I get ahead of myself.

We finished the ice cream base, and then we put it in the ice cream maker for the recommended 20-30 minutes. We've never had an issue before so we just left it running and went upstairs.

And then I came back downstairs to this disaster.

And of course when I started took out the churning piece to put the ice cream into a freezer container I just made the mess worse. 

Was it worth every drip and every minute of cleaning up melted ice cream and washing all the dishes involved in making it (there were a lot)? Absolutely.

I can't tell how close it tastes to graham canyon because it's been too long since I've had that, but it is just delicious.

I think I ate half of it while transferring it to the freezer container.

For anyone interested in the recipe:
The vanilla ice cream/custard base was made using Alton Brown's recipe. It takes 8 egg yolks! Also, for vanilla sugar I just used 9 oz. of white sugar and added 2-3 tsp or so of vanilla to it. This base needs to be cooked before chilled and then churned. The hot ice cream tastes just like tapioca pudding, and I was eating it by the spoonful.

Once the ice cream cooled on the counter, I added 1 sleeve of crushed graham crackers. I mean crushed to dust. I did this in a blender. It was kind of chunky when I added it to the ice cream, but that was fine.

I followed Alton Browns instructions and cooled it for 4-8 hours (I actually did 24 hours, oops).

In the meantime, I used this recipe to make chocolate honeycomb candy. I crushed the candy to very small pieces (but not powder) and covered it completely in a thin layer of chocolate by shaking it inside a zip-lock bag with melted chocolate chips.

Once the ice cream was cooled in the fridge, I added maybe 1/2 cup or so (we didn't measure, I just did what looked right) of the candy to the ice cream, and put it in the ice cream maker, where it proceeded to overflow over the next 30 minutes.

This stuff is just to die for. So rich. So creamy. So sweet. So graham cracker-y.

Balloon Bouquet

At my work, we always celebrate birthdays by everyone bringing cake/candy/balloons for the birthday person. I signed up to bring balloons for one of my co-workers, so I bought them the night before an put them in the hallway at home. 

This is what the balloon bouquet looked like (after giving it to my co-worker).

David and I wake up at 6am every morning, and we usually walk downstairs before turning on any lights. 

You can probably see where this is going. 

We walked out into the hallway, and with only the moonlight to light our path, we saw the big balloon bouquet. We had forgotten about putting it there the night before, and of course my brain thought it looked like a tall man wearing a hoodie. 

I screamed, David screamed, and we both jumped/ran away. 

I think that may have been the closest I've ever come to having a heart attack in my life. 

Drive-In Movie

Going to a drive-in movie is super fun, but documenting the adventure with pictures is not.

I forgot to bring my actual camera, so all I had to work with was my phone.

My thoughts:
"Hey! Let's take picture so we can always remember this! I'll do it during the previews so I don't miss the movie."

"Not too bad, but you can't even tell whose feet those are, and there is only one set of feet."

"Hah! You can't even tell what is happening in this picture!"

"Dang it, I missed the bright screen and it's black in this picture."

(Timing it as perfectly as I can) "Finally, both our feet in front of a bright-ish movie screen. Man, it's still so hard to tell that we are in a car. Maybe a flash will help."

"Oh gosh. Bad idea. Well if I can't document the movie experience, maybe I can at least get a picture of us enjoying the movie."

"HOLY COW that flash is as bright as the noonday sun and it stays on for like 30 seconds! But I'm not in the picture. Is it worth it to take another one? I'm sure all our neighboring cars are so annoyed right now."

"Nailed it"

At this point I was just to embarrassed to try to get a better picture because I thought all the neighbors were probably staring at me.

Mistakes Were Made

If you don't check who the recipient of your text is before you press send, you might just make a very funny mistake.

This morning I did my workout, and then I took a picture of my abs after. I was feeling really confident and felt like I looked so good in the picture, that in the middle of the day I texted David the image.

Only I didn't text David.

 Luckily I sent it to Kati, one of my best friends, instead of someone else.

David and I could not stop laughing. It wasn't the picture that made it funny, but the wording. "Look how sexy my bod looked this morning" Hahahah.

Vase

My mom had this huuuuge decorative vase that my grandma gave to her. After looking inside there was a bunch of trash in it, but we didn't know how to get it out. David helped me lower it to the ground on top of him, so we could shake all the trash out into a box that we could throw out. He was underneath the vase so we wouldn't break or chip it on the tile

David is just so cute and I got this embarrassing picture of him and I couldn't help but post about it.

 

Lost Keys

David normally drives the car, but for some reason last week I did. After coming in the house for an hour or so, we realized we had no idea where our car keys were. I am notorious for losing everything ever, but I figured they would turn up eventually. Thank goodness we have a spare set, but we still wanted to find them because they had our mail key on them. We searched all over the house, and David asked me the regular questions:

"When was the last time you saw them?"
"Where did you go after we got home?"
"Where could they have gone?"
Etc.

We left the next day to go to Fresno for Thanksgiving. David made a few comments about the lost keys. After getting home and still not having found them, we were worried I had permanently lost the keys.

Until David went to put on his work pants.

Do you see that green lanyard coming out of the pocket of his navy blue pants? Those are the car keys. 

For the first time in our entire relationship it was David who lost them, not me. We had a good chuckle about that for a while. 

Pumpkin Pie

David and I carpool to work. This one particular day walking to the car my hands were full with my lunch, his lunch, is luch dessert (pumpkin pie), a water bottle, and a book or something. I get into the car and set everything on my lap. His lunch and pie are in ziplock baggies, so they are kind of slippery ad slide all over the place. I am juggling too many things on my lap, so when they fall to the floor I don't bother to pick them up.

After a few minutes David worriedly asks me, "Amanda, where is my pumpkin pie?" I reply "Just around here somehwere."

He is worried enough that he makes me search for it. It wasn't on the floor like I had suspected. It also was not a very rigid pie at all, like I suspected. I mean, this thing was borderin on the softness of apple sauce. I eventually found it tucked under my left butt cheek by my seatbelt buckle. Without even feeling it I had squished his perfect slice of pie.

After David had cut his perfect slice of pie earlier that morning, it had fallen crust-up onto the floor. He thought he had escaped scott free because all that happened was a tiny layer of pie got peeled off the top and stuck to the ground. And then I came along and sat on it. Whoops.