How To Make Ice Cream

Here's a wonderfully adaptable recipe for making your own ice cream.
You'll of course need an ice cream maker.
I prefer to use an electric model, one that doesn't require using ice or rock salt.

You will need:
2 cups of heavy cream
1 cup of whole milk
3/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon of vanilla
a pinch of salt
2 whole eggs and 1 egg yolk, beaten

Heat the cream mixture to almost a boil. Whisk a little bit of the hot cream mixture into your beaten eggs slowly, and then slowly add the heated egg mixture to your original cream mixture, in a slow stream, whisking the entire time.
Cook until slightly thickened. Do not let come to a boil.
Pour your custard mixture through a fine sieve and cool, stirring occasionally until cold. About 3 hours.
You can then pour this ice cream custard into your ice cream maker according to it's instructions.

Of course, this is a base recipe for making ice cream. You can add pretty much any flavor to this custard that you'd like.
Add a handful of chocolate chips or a few tablespoons of cocoa powder to the warm mixture for chocolate ice cream. Add a teaspoon of orange extract to that and you've got delicious chocolate-orange ice cream.

The possibilities of flavors are endless ~ from sweet to savory. Once you get the method of making the custard down, you can experiment with whatever you like.

Happy Ice Cream Making!

How to make the perfect boiled egg

It's really quite simple to make a perfectly boiled egg.
1. Place however many eggs you are cooking into a pot and fill with cold water.
2. Place the pot, uncovered, on a high heat burner.
3. When the water comes to a full, rolling boil, take off the heat and cover.
4. Set a timer for 10 minutes.
5. When timer goes off, place eggs into an ice bath, or run cold water over them.
The egg whites will be firm while the yolks will be set at an almost-soft stage. If you wish, time the eggs for 12 minutes instead, for a more cooked yolk
Perfect atop a nicoise salad...

How to Roast a Chicken...seriously

Wash your chicken with cold water and pat it dry with paper towels.

Before we get to cooking the bird, you'll want to make a compound butter.
It's very simple. Soften some butter. Don't try to cheat and melt it, it won't work the same way. You've got to plan ahead and leave the butter out to get to room temperature. This will take a few hours. I do about a half pound at a time. (2 sticks) You can freeze whatever you have left over. (If any) Mix your softened butter with whatever herbs and spices you have handy. Basically, whatever you like the flavor of, even dried herbs and spices, mix it in. I like to use minced garlic and tarragon, maybe some lemon zest, and always salt and pepper...

I always stuff my roast chickens with something. Usually, an unpeeled and quartered onion, a quartered lemon, same with an apple, garlic cloves, some fresh herbs...really, whatever you have laying around that you like...

Carefully run your hand, sometimes I use the handle of a wooden spoon, under the skin on the breast of the bird to loosen the membrane underneath. Then, take your compound butter and slather it it in there, under the skin. Take your time so that you don't tear the skin, you want to keep the butter as sealed in as you can to impart the maximum amount of flavor. Rub some butter over the outside of the bird as well, and remember the drumsticks!

In order for the bird to cook evenly, there are a few tricks. First, tuck it's wings behind themselves so that it's forearms are popped in the back. Second, you can 'truss' a chicken without using any string at all. Make an incision into one of the lower arms of the drumsticks, where there is a space between two smaller bones, and tuck the end of the opposite drumstick through that hole. Otherwise, use some foil and twist it around the ends of the drumsticks to bring them together.

I like to use sliced potatoes as my base in a roasting pan with some carrots and onion slices. Place the chicken on top of the base, and roast at 450 for about 50-60 minutes (for a 2-3 pound chicken)
After checking that the chicken is done, let it rest for 20 minutes before slicing.

My Experiences With Socialized Medicine Part III

After seeing the Head Doctor, I was ushered down to the Heart Trauma Ward within a matter of hours.
Again, it was the same set-up. A big room with 6 curtained 'private rooms' within. I was taken to the one remaining unoccupied bed. I had been wheeled down in a gurney with a non-English speaking Sister, so I wasn't able to ascertain where I was going, or why.
By this point, I hadn't been in contact with any of my family or friends in the US. I was so totally unprepared for this kind of event that I didn't have any pocket change with me to use with the pay phone.
Which, I was soon to discover, was like something out of the early 1900's. It was crazy. They wheeled it over to your bed, a great big wooden monstrosity that seemed as heavy as lead. But, it worked, and through the effort of my new roommates, God bless them, I was able to call my father in America.
Of course, there was really nothing that he or anyone could do for me, but I felt better knowing that someone knew where I was, at least.
I found out after talking to the other women that I was indeed in the Heart Trauma Ward, and that the Doctors would be coming around pretty soon so not to worry, I'd find out what was going on.

The first time I went to use the restroom in this new ward, I hadn't realized that it was actually a Co-Ed bathroom, and that guess what? The doors wouldn't lock! It was a struggle to get in there with an IV pole and all, but I did finally accomplish my 'goal' so to speak, when the stall door swung open and I was literally exposed for all to see. The old guy who had opened the door, just stood there staring. I screamed for him to shut the f-ing door and he scurried off.
All of this and I haven't even mentioned how filthy everything was.
That bathroom was like something you'd find in a gas station, for crying out loud.
I was in that Welsh Hospital for another 3 days. In the end, I had to actually check myself out by refusing any more treatment. I was informed that, by doing so, I would no longer be welcome at that Hospital - even in the case of an Emergency.
A few months later, I'm wandering around the City Centre, doing my shopping, etc. and I run into one of the Jr. Doctors that treated me in the Hospital. He actually went out his way to apologize to me for the awful treatment that I had received there.
As you can imagine, I do not have a very complimentary view of Socialized Medicine. Partly, but not only, because of my experience in that Welsh Hospital.

My Experiences With Socialized Medicine - Part II

I never did see the doctor that day. I was weak, it was difficult enough to even eat, let alone ask questions. I finally slept.
One thing I can tell you about living on a ward at a Hospital is that you get to know your 'roommates' quite intimately, very early on. As you can imagine, the Cancer Ward in particular can be quite a wake up call as to how violently our own bodies can betray us. My experience was the stuff of nightmares. Screaming in the night, terrible odors, as you may well imagine, one woman actually passed away while I was there. I can't tell you what that feels like. I never really slept while I was in that Ward. I was terrified of not waking up!

I was on my third day in this place, with no more information, no more awareness than I had come in with. I felt trapped in a kind of Kafka novel. It was like a bad dream. I was stuck here, unable to move, unable to tell my loved ones where I was and what was happening. I had no control over my own treatment. Hell, I didn't even know what the treatment was! I asked questions, of every Sister I saw. I raised hell...
I was getting desperate.
First and foremost, why was I on the Cancer Ward? I vaguely recalled having my shirt taken off and a chest X-Ray (or two) being performed. (Where was my shirt, come to think of it?) Did they find something in that X-Ray that could possibly land me here?

I think it was the 3rd or 4th day that I got to have a bath. It was the only bathtub on the ward, but boy, it was a good one! It even had a jacuzzi feature, which was useless to me, as I could hardly breathe enough to get in the damn thing. I was left alone to fend for myself with an IV in my hand, attached to a pole with wheels. I had never felt so exhausted as I did after that bath. Literally gasping for breath, I managed to bathe and dry myself and then stagger back to my bed. Phew!
It was either that day or the next that I got to finally see the Doctor.
Well, actually, not the 'Doctor' but the Assistant to the Doctor.
But, OK.
I know that I'm a citizen here, but...I'm REALLY an American, ya know? I have an American accent. And so, I demand better treatment! I have questions! What is happening? Why am I on the Cancer Ward? What am I being treated for, specifically? What medications am I being given?
The women in the ward with me seemed shocked at the questions I asked of the Assistant to the Doctor. As did the Assistant, himself. But why? I had a right to know what my treatment entailed. I was mystified...
The Doctor did come see me not long after that.
When he walked into the room, I knew exactly who he was. He went from bed to bed, reading each ladies' charts, telling the two Assistants by his side what he thought of each case, until he came to me.
He actually paused when he read my chart. "What are you doing here?", he asked.
"I don't know", I replied, "care to tell me"?
He performed a few tests on me, instructed his assistants to perform Spirometry tests on me at midnight, 4am, 6am and then throughout the day. I was also moved to a different ward. It turned out that my bed was needed for someone actually undergoing the battle of cancer.
I left, with relief.
Turns out, I was headed for the 'Heart Trauma Ward' Oh, goodie!

My Experiences With Socialized Medicine

I moved to Tre'ddol, Wales, UK in 2001. To be exact, I left America on September 18, 2001. Just 7 days after 9/11.
Before the terrorist attack, I was excited to leave the US and start a new adventure. While I had never lived in Wales before, I had spent many years in England, both studying at University and apprenticing in a hotel kitchen.
I was born in England, and so, warts and all, I was able to live there as a citizen - work as a citizen, pay taxes as a citizen, etc. I was looking forward to it!
About 3 weeks after my arrival, I got sick. I mean, really sick.
I have Asthma, so something as simple as a cold can easily develop into a serious situation. This time a had the flu. And not a flu strain that I had been in contact with before, so I was even more unprepared. It threw me for a loop. I really believe that I came close to death that evening, and if someone hadn't checked on me that night, I probably would have fallen asleep. Perhaps forever. Thank God they did!
But I digress.
When it was apparent to the person checking up on me that I could not talk, let alone walk for want of breath, I was scooped up and delivered to the nearest hospital.
I was immediately ushered into a curtained 'room' and given oxygen. I sat there for hours sucking that oxygen down. I was checked up on periodically, to see if it was working enough to send me home. It wasn't working. I needed more treatment.
And that's when I got checked into the Hospital itself.
I was 25 years old, in a foreign country where I hardly knew a soul, and I couldn't get in touch with any of my friends or family in the US. I don't mind telling you that I was terrified.
Turns out I had good reason.
The Hospital officials weren't sure where to put me since I was so young, and they had a very limited amount of beds available. I ended up in the Cancer Ward.
I kid you not!
Meanwhile, I am told nothing. I was brought up to the ward, placed in a bed, hooked up to an IV, O2 monitor, heart monitor, the works. It's the middle of the night, everything is dimmly lit and I have to speak in whispers.
I asked questions of the 'sisters' (nurses): what kind of medication are you giving me? Why am I being admitted? When will I see a doctor? I was given non-answers.
Meanwhile, I'm the new arrival in the ward. I'm in large room with 5 other women.
Since it was the middle of the night, everyone was asleep. It was eerie.
I didn't sleep at all that night. I had never been admitted to a hospital for anything before in my life. In fact, the only other hospital experience I had was of seeing my mother in the ICU after a car accident. Obviously, the association was not a good one.
At 6 am everyone started to wake up. A new crew of Sisters were bustling around, there was medicine to be given, tests to take, blood to draw.
I'm thinking, cool. Maybe now I can find out about what's going on here.
I ask a Sister who takes my temperature, blood pressure, etc. when can I see someone who will tell me what is going on? Apparently, the Doctor will come around 2 pm.
I am asked to fill out a form giving a choice of breakfast, lunch and dinner items.
Do I like tea or coffee? Tea of course, white. With sugar.
Pretty soon, I start getting questions from the other ladies in the Ward.
I find out they are here for cancer treatment. Have you ever seen someone go through a battle with cancer? It's not pretty. I had recently seen my grandmother go through it, and a there was woman in the ward obviously at the very end stage of the disease.
I immediately started getting paranoid. Was there something the doctors knew that I didn't?
Where's the pay phone, anyway?

Does The Buck Still Stop With You, Mr. President?

It's turned out that the Christmas Day Bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, was only interrogated for 50 minutes before he was mirandized and provided with a Government-paid lawyer. Can you guess what happened next? Yep, you got it - he shut up. Even more stunningly, the Obama administration is defending it's decision by pointing out that before being mirandized, Abdulmutallab gave the FBI some good intelligence. So why stop?

It just doesn't make any sense.
Many people who support Obama are pointing to how Richard Reid, the shoe bomber, was treated by the Bush administration. With just a superficial glace at both cases, they may indeed seem to be very similar. Reid was also mirandized and got 'lawyered up'.
If you look a little deeper, though, it's apparent that there are a few critical differences in the two cases.
In the case of Richard Reid, his flight landed at approx. 12:55 pm and he was allegedly informed of his rights about 4 hours later, at approx. 5:07 pm. Whereupon, he was interrogated for hours and eventually did talk.
Also, Reid's terror attack took place on December 22, 2001. Just 3 months after Sept, 11th., when the Department of Homeland Security wasn't formed yet. That didn't happen until November, 2002. You could argue that the Bush administration created the Dept. specifically in reaction to the Reid debacle, in fact.
If anything, the 8 years that have elapsed since Richard Reid's 'shoe-bomb' attack should have taught us how to handle situations like this. Apparently, the lesson here is that Obama is just fine with treating a terrorist as a criminal, and not as an unlawful combatant. Even after 8 years of intense targeting of the US by terrorists around the world, Obama is still oblivious. Perhaps willfully so...

You Must Embrace The Bagels

When I tell people that I'm a Chef, they usually seem to think that it must be a wonderfully creative profession, that I get to sit around all day dreaming up fabulous recipes, sampling all kinds of tasty foods and maybe strolling around the local Farmers Market in search of the best produce...
The reality is quite different from that. The reality is that you do basically the same repetitive tasks everyday.
The trick is to make it all consistent and of superior quality.
We sell handmade bagels, for instance. Everyday I have to make the dough, let it rest, weigh out each bagel portion, hand-form them, let them 'proof', dunk into sweetened boiling water, sprinkle various toppings on them, and then bake.
I'll tell ya, it can get pretty boring.
That's why we run specials everyday, it's a chance for us to experiment with different ideas and to just plain do something different. Sometimes a very popular special will 'make it' to the regular menu - which then, ironically, just makes it another daily task to perform.
I must warn you, though, that most restaurants use their specials boards to feature food that is about to go bad... a sad fact, I'm afraid.
And by the way, no, I don't eat gourmet meals every night. In fact, I hardly cook when I'm home at all, and usually end up eating cereal a few nights a week

One Year into the Obama Presidency -or- The Boulevard of Broken Dreams

Wednesday will mark the 1 year anniversary of Barack Obama being sworn into the office of the President of the United States.
Let's take a look back at some of the broken promises of the 'hope' and 'change' campaign.
The most outlandish campaign promise that was immediately broken, was the Obama guarantee of unprecedented transparency, including the promise of broadcasting health care reform negotiations on C-Span. So far that has not happened. Instead, these 'talks' have taken place behind closed (and locked) doors... Obama and his cronies are going to ram the monstrosity of a health care bill through, ignoring the fact that most Americans don't want it, and they are willing and able to use every trick in the book in order to do it.
We were also promised 5 days to look over and comment on all non-emergency bills before they were signed into law. This is almost laughable, I mean, who really believed that to begin with? Of course, we have not seen even one bill on the White House website that we have been able to comment on before it was passed into law.
Obama also promised that he would end the income tax for seniors making less than $50,000. That promise has completely fallen off of the Obama radar it would seem. He's had ample opportunity to enact this pledge, a year's worth of opportunity in fact, and yet he has done nothing. I suspect it will remain that way.
I could go on with more examples....
We're only a year into the Obama presidency and things aren't looking so dreamy.

Will Obama be blamed for Haiti the same way that Bush was blamed for Katrina?

The disaster in Haiti has brought out a few people who are still complaining about how Bush handled Hurricane Katrina. I find it truely astonishing that anyone would try to lay any blame whatsoever onto President Bush for what happened in the Katrina-damaged states. It was a ridiculous argument then and it's even more ridiculous now. In the case of a natural disaster, the Federal government will, of course, be slow to act. It may be physically difficult to get food and water into the effected areas. Not to mention the fact that there will always be bureaucratic hoops to jump through, which, during an emergency situation, will be sped up - but, still, it'll take a few days for the actual money to reach those who need it. Anyone with a brain must realize that it's up to the local politicians (Mayor, Governor, etc.) to prepare for whatever natural disaster(s) may hit their respective states. It's up to them to ensure that the citizens of their states will have emergency systems open to them until the Feds can step in and help. Especially in New Orleans, where a hurricane could spell out disaster to the levee-dependent city. Why didn't Mayor Nagin plan for such a disaster? Why were there no emergency supplies of food or water in the Superdome? Why were school buses left untouched, when people could have used them to evacuate? Why was there no enforcement of the mandatory evacuation? These kind of questions were hardly asked at the time, let alone 4 years hence. Instead, Bush became the man to blame. Bush was cast as the white, rich, racist who thought nothing of leaving thousands of people to suffer and die.
Not only that, but Mayor Nagin was actually reelected! By saying things like, "This city will be chocolate at the end of the day." and "I can see in your eyes, you want to know, 'How do I take advantage of this incredible opportunity? How do I make sure that New Orleans is not overrun by Mexican workers'?"
What has the world come to? Sometimes I feel like I'm living in the Twilight Zone.
Although the context is different, I wonder if President Obama will be blamed for the slow response of emergency relief to Haiti? He is the leader of the free world afterall, why'd it take him so long to get food, water and medical aide to an island approx. 750 miles from Florida?

Nuke The Hippies!

WARNING! This is satire..I do not actually want to 'Nuke' anyone, or anything. (Unless they deserve it) Please read with due caution. If you are sensitive, or have no sense of humor, you may want to ignore me altogether.
It all started with the famous T-Shirt: 'Nuke The Whales'...I thought that was hilarious when I first saw it as a kid. As a grown-up (well, that's debatable really), I saw the slogan again and thought, Huh, what else could you 'Nuke'? What are some things that I'd like to get rid of and never see again? And it came to me, of course!... HIPPIES!
Just think of what a wonderful world we'd live in if we could get rid of the hippies...to never again have to see all of that long, greasy, straggly hair, to not have to ever smell patchouli again... we could abolish Tie-Dye! We could outlaw rose-colored glasses... we could get rid of that stupid Peace sign....
Now, with the liberal (ie Hippie) movie, Avatar, I think that we may have found a way to actually put my 'plan' into action. Could we possibly convince the hippies that there really IS a place just like Pandora? We'd have to say that Dick Cheney has diabolically managed to shrink down their 'paradise world' and has hidden it deep in the mountains of some far-away island in the Pacific. We could tell them that the island has only electric vehicles and all of the electricity comes from solar panels that are installed (free of charge, naturally) onto each home... Psst, you can have all the weed you want, man, and it's FREE!
Word about this new 'Pandora' would spread like wildfire. We'd get them all out there as a group, and well, you know the rest....
Of course, I could go with my other, also funny, idea: Pave The Seas!

Some People Have a Way with Words, Others Not Have Way...

In the future, you can expect to see my own brand of political commentary. Take for instance Harry Reid's racist statement. (that Obama was a good presidential candidate because he was "light-skinned" and "had no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one". ) What he's really saying is that if Barack Obama had been dark-skinned and spoke with a 'Negro dialect', he would not have been an acceptable presidential candidate. I must ask then, why not, Harry Reid?
Statements like that point to the general double-talk that is rife within the Democrat Party. If you really want to understand the Democrats, listen to what they are NOT saying....