Filed under: Failure, Jewelry by ramune

Metronomy – Heartbreaker

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Dear Rio Grande-

I am sorry to do this to you, but I have to end this relationship. You see, you lied to me and I don’t think I can trust you anymore. When I asked for fine silver, I believed you when you said it was fine silver. I don’t think I ask for much, but I do expect honesty. Because of your careless nature, I lost 3.5 hours tonight working with some weird mutant silver that is clearly not what I asked for. You know I am on a tight deadline and yet you provided me with crap materials that reacted in ways they should not have. I spoke with some of your exes and they say that you have told them the same lies. When will you learn? You have left me no choice. I am going back to Metalliferous. We have a history anyway and there are no lies between us.

Goodbye.

-Ramune

Filed under: Failure, Ice Cream, taste by ramune

A few months ago I decided I wanted to buy an ice cream maker. Once the idea was in my head I could not get it out. When I couldn’t find the ice cream maker I wanted, I got mildly frustrated because I had these grand plans to create ice cream that would blow the world away (well not really, but it would be fun to send delicious ice cream care packages to friends). After a few hiccups, mainly getting screwed over by iKitchen when they sent me a refurbished maker and took far too long to reimburse me, I finally got a new working ice cream maker. I am not sure how it happened, but my ice cream maker sat in the closet unused for most of the summer . . . until this past week when I finally decided to take it out and put it to use.

I probably should have gone straight to Epicurious or some respectable ice cream recipe page, but I didn’t. I looked up “ice cream recipes” in Google and picked something that sounded good and relatively easy for my first batch: Crunchy Pecan Maple Syrup ice cream (I am not going to post the link because it’s not worth it). The recipe was simple . . . probably too simple. Even while I was making it I thought that it could use a few extra ingredients but I figured for my first time making ice cream I should just stick to the recipe. Unfortunately the recipe I chose was lame and although I am not happy with the results I thought I should post it anyway (it’s all part of the process anyway, right?).

The next time I make ice cream I am going to look up a few more recipes and do some serious research (Bobby Flay just did a throwdown that involved making Maple Spice ice cream . . . mmm). Maybe once it’s worth eating I will test it out on some friends. In the meantime, here are some photos of the process. I am still without a tripod so there are some shots I wanted to get and just couldn’t.

Roasting pecans

Mixing the ingredients

The final product, Crunchy Pecan Maple Syrup ice cream . . . mediocre.