Making Frozen Cold Stuff

Once upon a time, we used to call ice cream, sorbet, sherbet, whatever "frozen cold stuff", because Rachel didn't know what it meant. I haven't tested the (ice) waters lately, but I'm pretty sure she does now, so we tend to spell or mouth whatever we're talking about now.

At any rate, Dawn's father gave us the Williams-Sonoma Ice Cream cookbook and a gift certificate for an ice cream maker for our anniversary. This to go with the Ice Cream King & Queen bowls he gave us a few years ago. He chose a gift certificate because he didn't want to try to bring the machine up on a plane, but he had one in mind, so I took him to the nearest Williams-Sonoma. There we discovered that KitchenAid makes an ice cream maker attachment that, among others, fits our mixer.

This is very cool. Although it really only takes up marginally less space, it's nice not to have wound up with a whole new independent device. It also makes slightly more at a time than the Cuisinart, if I remember correctly. The idea of not having a new device but expanding the utility of one we already have was very appealing, and is the real reason we settled on it.

I finally got around to trying it out with Rachel when Dawn stayed in So Cal after her sister-in-law's funeral. I came home to Rachel, who'd spent the night with my parents and part of the afternoon with a neighbor. Since Dawn was coming home on her birthday, I decided that Rachel and I should make ice cream. Well, actually, I was planning on some kind of sorbet (no fat), but Rachel picked the Double Chocolate Ice Cream from the Williams-Sonoma book and wouldn't be swayed. No, I didn't try that hard. Only got as far as "well, Rachel, I was thinking of (don't remember which one)".

This actually went pretty well. The ice cream was very tasty, though a little bit gritty. I started to say 'grainy'... I have photography on the brain because I've been culling the digital image collection. I'm down to about 6800 pictures dating to 11/01. Don't know where I started. But I digress. I'm not sure it really qualifies as double chocolate in my book, but I did use Ghirardelli powder and Scharffen Berger 72% (I think) El Carmen bars. Dawn was extremely thrilled and Rachel, I think, actually managed to keep it something of a secret. I think she gave away that we made it, it was brown, and it was cold. Not too bad for not quite 4 1/2!

The problem that did crop up was in the making. In retrospect, I think that I may not have locked the bowl properly. As a result, when the ice cream started to thicken a bit, the blade bound a little bit and made the bowl turn and jump out of its seat. This pulled the blade's little attachment piece off the drive shaft and scraped off some of the inside of the attachment, rendering it now improperly shaped to fit the drive... whooops. Williams-Sonoma were kind enough to exchange it; I hadn't realized then what happened, so all I could tell them was that it jumped unexpectedly.

Our next try, last week, was to make Meyer Lemon Sorbet (also from the W-S Ice Cream book), with lemons from one of the trees in our back yard. I didn't have as many lemons as I needed, so I attempted to cut the recipe to the right proportions. I might have miscalculated the amount of sugar, because it was a little too tart. I also finally figured out that the freezer was turned to its coldest setting, because the sorbet was rock solid and took more than twenty minutes to thaw significantly!

I wish I'd strained this a little too - there was too much of the lemon flesh that wasn't pulp... little bits of the various white of the lemon. I am not sure whether this is because those pieces fit through the strainer when I was juicing the lemons, or if I didn't keep the strainer clean enough and it was overflowing. I suspect the later. It also would probably have been good to slice up the zest somewhat so that I'd have lots of little pieces, rather than a couple of dozen long strips.

Today, we went for Blood Orange Sorbet (from Lindsey Shere's Chez Panisse Desserts cookbook, page 77). Rachel went shopping with my parents yesterday so that Dawn and I could have breakfast and a much needed chance to talk without interruption. Part of getting her to agree to go was to help her make a list of things that she should get. Cheese (cantal and istara, thank you very much! No swiss for this girl, thanks to my parents), strawberries (if there were any good ones available), and blood oranges.


This time, I decided that I was going to use the amounts from the recipe, come hell or high water, so when the really good blood oranges from Monterey Market didn't produce enough juice, I sent Dawn off to get more. The ones she got from Berkeley Bowl (Monterey Market was closed, since it's Sunday) were not as red, though I couldn't say whether that changed the taste significantly. We have more of those left now; I should see how they are.

Anyway, I had the same problem with this that I did with the lemon, as far as getting more than juice and pulp. I will have to get a strainer! I really did want to leave the pulp in, and should again have chopped up the zest, but it wound up not mattering. I didn't want the non-pulp pieces of flesh in there, so I wound up straining it through a flour sifter. Hey, it worked, so don't knock it! I did lose the majority of pulp as well as the zest, but since I hadn't remembered that I wanted to chop up the zest, that part might be OK.

Since the recipe only calls for heating a small portion of the juice (instead of water, which was nice somehow) to melt the sugar, the mixed juice wasn't all that warm, so I decided not to bother chilling it. Especially since the recipe didn't say how much or for how long. That might have been a mistake, because the sorbet stopped getting thicker at a point when it was really still just slushy. It was absolutely delicious, however. It definitely did not come out too tart; in fact, it might even have had a touch too much sugar. It seems as if it might be difficult to adjust the amount of sugar, since you're only melting it with a little bit of the juice initially, and have to mix it all together to find out how sweet it has become...

Will have to think about that. I suppose that when it turns out not sweet enough (because of starting with less sugar) I could take some of the juice, even though it's partially sweetened, and use it to melt some more sugar. Or maybe I'll try it with Stevia next time... that won't even require heating to melt.

How's That Work?

I don't quite understand how this works. Clarence Ray Allen was executed this morning by the State of California. For the last couple of weeks, though, there's been a bit of an outcry about how it's cruel and unusual punishment because he's sick and legally blind. Now, I think the death penalty is wrong and shouldn't be available as a sentence for any crime anywhere, but I don't understand how it is crueler or more unusual for someone like Allen who had become sick and legally blind during his time on Death Row, than it would be for someone who were essentially healthy with 20/20 vision. I'm sorry that the State government is able to put someone to death in my name, but as long as he had the capacity to receive a legal sentence, I don't see how declines in his health over his time in prison could rescue him from that sentence.

Ballet Class!

Rachel had her first ballet class yesterday. She talked about it all morning and from 10 to noon asked whether it was time to go only about 18 times. She was so excited! It was very cute. When we finally went, she loved every minute and grinned ear-to-ear almost the whole time. Imagine seven or eight girls, four or five years old trying to follow the teacher's instructions... First position... fifth position... legs up on the barre... no, hook with your heel, not your knee. Don't forget to point your feet out!

I don't post pictures of her in public, so send me email or a comment if you want to see them...

Playing Catch-up

I keep putting off posting because I have a lot to tell and it will take a while, but then what I have to tell just grows, so here's a summary for the meantime.

We went to So Cal for New Years. Dan and I have been organizing group trips to Tahoe every other year, but it just wasn't in the cards for us this time, so we went to see him and Karyn instead. Flew down the 28th and back the 2nd. Had a fabulous time.

We stayed at the Beverly Garland Holiday Inn, which was fairly nice. They have 'kidsuites', which means bunk-beds, so Rachel was quite happy. Thursday we went to the LA Zoo, which was pretty nice. I took around 400 pictures, although I deleted a lot along the way and stopped just as we were about to leave with a full 1Gig CF card and 284 pictures. I went out to get in line before Dawn's father got there and walked back in with him to find Rachel and Dawn.

Rachel saw us (maybe pointed out by Dawn, but I'm not sure) when we were probably a hundred feet away and came running over top speed, yelling "We're over here" the whole way, to give Grandpa a huge hug. Not exactly calculated to hurt his feelings, as my mother likes to say.

Friday night, while Rachel went to dinner with Grandpa, we went to a really nice dinner with Dan & Karyn. Then Saturday we had brunch with Dawn's family before Dan and I made dinner at their place for a little New Year's Eve party. Rachel loves Dan & Karyn and not only got to go to sleep in their bed but wound up spending the night there, because Dawn was so tired I just decided to let them sleep. Dan & Karyn were on the air bed & I slept on the floor.

Sunday, we went to visit Brett & Cecilia and their kids and his mother Carol. We had a wonderful time with them, as we did last year right before heading home after Christmas.

Since we got home... Rachel either has another cough or the one she's had for a while got worse. I'm not really sure which. I spend a few hours Thursday afternoon attaching flexible plastic piping to two of our downspouts and running it out to the street in hopes that it will prevent any more flooding of our back bedroom.

Dawn and I are both trying to return to some semblance of reasonable eating, as well as working on getting in a better exercise habit. The house is such a collosal mess that my plans for riding my bike on the spinner aren't happening yet, but I did go walk for a while the other day.

Happy New Year to all!

Some Old Rachel Stories

I'm working on sending out the holiday letter, which means hunting down a couple of addresses. I wish Google Desktop Search were better about finding things in my multiple email archives, but... oh well. Anyway, while hunting for the address of Dawn's cousin Jill, I found an email dated 8/29/03 to Jill & her husband Schuyler (who coincidentally works for one of my customers) in which I related these three as being recent stories about Rachel.

1- One day, my brother took her to the park; as they were leaving, she looked at him and said, unprompted, "thank you for taking me to the park, Aaron." Two days later, we were having my parents, brother, neice, and nephew over for a BBQ; they arrived during Rachel's nap and when she saw Aaron after she got up, she said 'hi'. A moment later, she said "I'm ready to go to the park, Aaron."

2- My mother was playing the "what's so-and-so's name" game with Rachel. "What's my name?" "Carol" "What's your father's name?" "Daddy" "Well, that's what you call him, but what's his name?" "Dylan" "What's you're mother's name?" "Mommy" "Well, that's what you call her, but she's a person with a name. What's her name?" pause pause "I'm a person too." Today, she actually said to me "Are you a person with a name?" "Yes, Rachel, I'm a person and my name is Dylan." "I'm a person with a name too!"

3- And one not so recent; when she was just crawling, Dawn and Rachel took a nap on our bed; I think she was about 8 months old. Dawn woke up and went to do some things downstairs. After a while, oddly she started hearing VOICES from our bedroom, so she went up stairs wondering how someone could have gotten into the house without her noticing. Well... Rachel was sitting on the bed fiddling with the TV remote; you know, turning it around, looking at it, chewing on it... and, every so often, POINTING IT AT THE TV!

Shrieking? How about Glitter?

A while back, I mentioned about how girls shriek a lot. They also leave glitter all over. It's incredible - there can be no warning at all, just suddenly glitter everywhere! One of the things Rachel got for Christmas was a 'fairytale wonderland' dress-up chest, from Elisabeth. It has three costumes in it, pink, purple and blue. Rachel tried all three of them on over the course of the evening at Elisabeth's aunt's. Soon, there was starting to be glitter everywhere... on my pants, on the table cloth, on the chairs (mine, Dawn's, and Rachel's, at least), on the dogs... you get the idea. We figured it was from one of the costumes, but didn't investiage too carefully.

Last night, Rachel decided to wear the blue costume to bed. Silly, but fine, whatever. Then, this morning, she came and flopped on the bed with us for a little while. When I went back up there to do something for a couple of minutes, I discovered a TON of glitter all over that part of the bed! It's like fleas now, getting transferred from our bed onto me and then from me to the sofa, where I'm sitting now.

And it's not just the costume. At least 50% of cards and letters we get for her have glitter in them. They make glitter glue. And glitter make-up.

At least she didn't do any shrieking last night while opening it! She's very cute in the costumes, though.

2005 Holiday Letter

Hello everyone!

At this time last year, we had plans for sending out a year-end/holiday letter, but never actually got around to it. If anyone felt left out or forgotten, please know it was only how busy we often find ourselves and how often things we might like to do get put aside. Since it's been two years, I'll have to make sure to keep it brief, lest we go on too long...

I'm sure everyone wants to know about Rachel more than the rest of us, so I'll start with her (don't worry, we're used to it). Rachel is wonderful and changing and growing fast. As of 12/21, she's 42.5" tall, which makes her still about 90th percentile for height, as compared to 50th percentile for weight (still under 35 lbs) - tall and thin. She's been in a Montessori pre-school for a bit more than two years and loves it. She has learned and grown so much, it's just amazing. She's one of the bigger kids now and loves to take the new young children under her wing. She is working on reading, writing and even some simple math, loves the monkey bars, and is looking forward to the opening of the two new play structures at school in January.

Believe it or not, all this means that we're trying to decide where she should go for Kindergarten. It's a bit of a dilemma –she can either complete her Kindergarten year where she is now or begin Kindergarten at our local elementary school. We actually like both options, but beginning at the local public school for Kindergarten means she will be assured of a spot in a 1st grade class, whereas if we wait to start her in public school in 1st grade, there may or may not be a spot at our first choice for an elementary school. It’s made still more interesting because many of our neighbors’ children will also begin Kindergarten there! We’ve still got time to finalize this decision and we are taking it!

Over the last two years, Rachel has taken gymnastic and music classes and next month she'll be starting 'Little Leapers', a dance class at the Y. Always very verbal, Rachel is extremely talkative, although she's going through a phase of using a lot of baby talk. She's very good at making friends, both with the other 12 kids under the age of 10 on our block and with the kids at school, including her friend Tessa who is the daughter of my friend Dana, whom I've known since before high school!

Dawn has been working for the local Head Start for quite some time now. She's been responsible for disabilities and mental health and has helped significantly in getting the agency back on track. Soon after she started, they had their regular Federal oversight review and the results were very poor - only Dawn's area had no deficiencies! Early this month, though, the Feds did a mini-review and announced that they were "clearing" all the deficiencies. It's been a long road, and Dawn had a huge hand in it. Negotiations will start next month on whether she'll stay - they're pretty desperate to keep her, for good reason.

I've now been working for the same company for over 5 years, the longest I've been in a single position, and now we've been acquired again by a capital management firm. The rumors abound, but it sounds fairly positive. In particular, it seems clear that they view us as a software company and understand that we've been run by a finance group. In the software business, you sometimes have to spend money (by hiring sales people and software developers, for instance) in order to make money (by improving and selling the software, for instance).

Both our jobs are extremely convenient, being part of a 3-mile triangle from our house to our offices and Rachel's school. Although we each have had various reasons to want to leave these jobs, we've a log of reasons to keep them. We're hoping for some nice changes at work as we get into the new year!

Earlier this year, Dawn took Rachel and me to Disneyland for a week. It was my first time there as well as Rachel's, and we all had a great time. Four days in the two parks was plenty of time. Rachel particularly liked seeing all the various princesses (the only one we didn't 'meet' was Ariel, the Little Mermaid, presumably because she can't walk if she has fins; given that the movie ends with her deciding to remain human, I'm not sure why she can't be found walking around) and the “Ferrist” Wheel, as she calls it. It's huge and has cars that run on an internal rail so that they really swing and shake as the wheel turns. We took that for our first ride the first day, and lucked out a little - the way she was sitting, Rachel almost ended up going face first on the metal floor except that I was watching her to see her reaction to the whole thing and managed to catch her. Her other favorite part was sleeping on the top bunk in the "Kid's Suite" at the hotel.

In May, I went on my tenth annual long weekend camping trip to Yosemite (only the third time we went, but that’s a long story); we had a wonderful time and are starting to plan for next year’s trip. In October, Dawn and Elisabeth went to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, for a week and also had a great time. They swam with dolphins, took a zip line adventure through a forest, went tequila tasting, and drove into beautiful mountains.

Dawn and I celebrated our 5th anniversary (already!) at the beginning of November. Rachel went to Monterey Bay with her grandparents and uncle, while Dawn and I went back to one of our favorite places - a bed & breakfast near Point Reyes. We had a wonderful time relaxing and hiking and taking pictures with my new camera, while Rachel got to touch a star fish and go on a whale watching boat ride (no whales). For Thanksgiving, we went to Mendocino with my family where we did more hiking, a lot of eating, and I took yet more pictures (900+).

Over the last few weeks, Dawn has been taking some time off from work, while I've been working more because we're so busy, but for the first time in 5 years, I am not working over the company's holiday break. My two current obsessions (both of which Dawn has gone on record as saying are “good” obsessions) are energy efficiency and photography. In the last several weeks, we have added insulation under the floors, into the exterior walls, and between the crawlspace and the house, sealed the various holes between the crawlspace and the house, and replaced the (very?) old washer and electric dryer with new very high efficiency models. I estimate that the insulation additions have cut our gas usage by 50% over last year (although Elisabeth was living with us then). At the end of October, we bought a new Toyota Prius, and like it quite well. We’ve saved over $200 in gas so far, and are emitting far less pollution to boot. Finally, around the end of January, we’ll be installing solar panels on the roof; the estimated production should cover around 85% of our annual electric usage. I have visions of yet more, but seem to remember promising to keep this brief…

As for photography, well… there are two parts to it. First is the new Canon 20D SLR with image stabilized (amazing!!) lenses, which has been just wonderful. It has been really nice having a ‘real’ camera in hand again, and I’ve taken some fantastic pictures already. Beyond that, I’ve been delving into an archiving project to sort, cull, catalog and scan all of the slides and negatives we have that seem worth keeping. So far, I’ve been through 91 rolls of slides dating from 1987 to 1999; they originally totaled around 3500 and I’ve cut them down to 1346. Next up is sorting our negatives, of which there are around 150 rolls! The slides took me about 50 hours over two weeks, and the negatives, being, well negative, will be much harder.

Also in the last two years, I've started keeping a weblog occasionally. I use it partially to help us write down tidbits of Rachel's life and development, partially as a way to let friends keep up with us when events or geography conspire to prevent spending much time together, and even occasionally as a way to vent, rant, rail, or celebrate. The blog address is http://dylanrandom.blogspot.com and you can always reach us by leaving a comment on it, or sending us email: dylan (at) darwincg (dot) com or dawn (at) darwincg (dot) com. Soon I'll have to make Rachel's into an actual mailbox: rachel (at) darwincg (dot) com; she's already started getting phone calls from friends, it can't be long before she starts getting email!

We wish happy holidays of all sorts and a wonderful 2006 for each of you.

Love,
Dylan, Dawn & Rachel

I Hate Bad Drivers

This is going to be a bit of a rant, but I really am getting fed up with bad drivers.

1- Your turn signals are there for a reason. Use them, but only when you're getting ready to make a turn! Now, I admit that I have forgotten to turn off a turn signal after changing lanes, but it doesn't happen often, and at least I was using the damned thing!

2- Also, it is a good idea to pay attention to the people who are driving around you. You're not the only person on the road, and the other drivers' predictive capabilities may be hampered by the momentary glance in the rear-view mirror or something, so don't suddenly decide to pull of to the right side of the road and then, even more suddenly and with even less warning, make a u-turn across the path of the people behind you. It's great that you were aware of the absence of on-coming traffic in the other lane, but some awareness of the people behind you would be good too.

This morning on the way to Rachel's school, some moron in a mini-van pulled out of traffic to the right as if to park, without signalling. OK, fine - would have been nice if you'd signalled, but you're not in the way, so it's not that big a ... WHOA!!! Make up your mind!! All of a sudden she was turning left across my path either into a drive-way or into a u-turn. Regardless, she didn't signal and I had no warning she was going to do it. Given that she didn't signal, I don't know whether it would even have been "my fault" if I'd hit her, as it is by default if you rear-end someone (at least here in California). Probably not, since she was actually out of the traffic lane (as if to park).

I managed to yell only "make up your mind" in front of Rachel, rather than the various more colorful things that went through my mind, such as "what the fuck are you doing, you stupid fucking idiot bitch!??!"

And then there was the guy Dawn was telling me about who, in a large pickup, came racing up behind her on the freeway, honked, and then raced around her. She called him an asshole. And the guy who came up behind me on the frontage road on the way to work, where the limit is 35 and I was doing 40, and then crossed the double yellow line to pass me.

I tell ya. It's far too easy to get a license, not to mention a car, in this state (and probably country). The number of people who either haven't had any real driver training or are completely incapable of following any semblance of the rules is ridiculous.

I'm just sayin' :-)

"Breathtaking Inanity"

Well put, Your Honor!

Judge bans teaching intelligent design

Judge Jones' Memorandum Opinion, dated 12/20/05. The conclusions starting on page 136 are good to read.

Vote Solar!

Duane sent me the URL for Vote Solar today. I haven't looked at most of the rest of the site, but they have a place for sending email to the California Public Utilities Commission to encourage them to enact the Million Solar Roofs campaign in California. The idea is that if we build a million solar roof installations over the next 10 years, we'll add something like 3,000 megawatts' production and we'll increase demand sufficiently to make a significant increase in supply which will result in a significant decrease in cost, which will, in turn, increase demand.

Dawn and I love watching Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. It would be nice if they could be a little less obvious about the product plugs, though at least occasionally it's fun that they make fun of it. What I really wish is that they would put solar panels on the houses they build. Some of these houses are huge and must have significant energy loads, even with energy efficient appliances and such, so it would be really great for both the family and the environment if the house were producing at least a portion of the power it needs. In some cases, I'm sure they could even put up enough solar to allow them, as I want to do eventually, to do both water & house heating with electricity generated by the solar panels.