John & Belle Have A Blog

Coconut Ice Cream

Last night, we had Dr. Memory (and his lovely gf Miranda) over for dinner. They had a layover in Singapore on their way back from Vietnam. This offer is open to all J&BB frequent commenters until such time as a) y'all start coming through Singapore every week or b) one of you does something creepy (OMG! Ben Wolfson is peeing on our carpet! I didn't realize he was actually raised by wolves!!!) In real life Dr, Memory doesn't have metal on his face, though he does have purple hair. In addition to the pandan cake and mango sauce, which I'll tell you about later, I invented a very tasty coconut ice cream to follow our hawker take-out dinner. Mitchell's worthy ice cream, in fact. Pho shizzle.

Belle's Coconut Ice Cream

1 1/2 c whole milk
1 c heavy cream, divided
3/4 c coconut cream (spooned off the top of an unshaken can of coconut milk)
1 50g packet powdered cream of coconut (also called instant coconut cream powder), available at Asian grocery stores
1/2 c sugar
5 egg yolks

1. Mix 1/4 c cream, coconut cream, sugar, egg yolks, and powdered coconut cream in a bowl and whisk together.

2. Bring milk and remaining cream just to boil in a heavy-bottomed saucepan over medium heat. Have a fine-mesh strainer ready over a clean bowl.

3. Carefully pour scalded milk into egg mixture in a thin stream, whisking constantly. Rinse out saucepan but do not dry.

4. Stirring constantly, cook over medium heat just until a finger drawn over the back of the wooden spoon leaves a clean trail. Strain into clean bowl.

5. Chill in fridge at least 4 hours, or overnight; freeze in ice cream maker.

I served it with a sauce made of two mangoes, 1/3 c corn syrup, the juice of 2 limes, and 1 T cognac, whizzed in the blender. It was hecka good.

An old white guy that plays high notes

I don't really have the energy to explain all my secrets of high-note playing after all. But I suggest you first consult this helpful diagram:

CSI: Ninth Circle of Hell

World O'Crap takes a break from scaring me with crazy right-wing blather (hint: God doesn't want me to wear pants) to make me laugh with white-hot hatred of CSI Miami!

We hate "CSI: Miami." Why do we watch it? Well, partly because we have nothing else to do Monday nights at 9:00. But more, we watch it to hate.

When we heard the promo stating that one of the "CSI: Miami" cast would die in the season premiere, we hoped that it would be Horatio Caine. We hate him with the heat of 1000 suns. It's one of those satanic confluences of an an annoying actor and an annoying character that together rise above annoyingness to reach, um, hatability.

We hate the way he talks -- both the way David Caruso reads a line, and the stupid lines they give him to read. For instance, one his team will say something obvious like, "Hey, a dead body!" And EVERY TIME Horatio will reply with something portentous and pompous, like "Not dead ... murdered. And it's our job to catch murderers." He'll say it like everybody should be thanking him for pointing this out, because they're, like, such idiots that without him they would have thought their job was to wear designer clothes and look hot. Oh, wait, that IS their job.

And then crime scene investigator Horatio will single-handedly wrestle a gang of murderous rappers to the ground, and will later later show up at their execution so he can quip something like, "You thought it was cool to hook kids on crack. Let's see how cool you are in the electric chair, my friend."

That is so, so true. For some reason they don't have L&O here in Singapore (well, they have Law and Order: Creepy Perverts Doing Shit That Will Keep You Up At Night Unit), only CSI: Miami. Luckily, I don't watch television, so I guess it doesn't matter. But anyway, Caruso sux0rz.

UPDATE: As PZ Meyers rightly asks, what was Gary Sinise thinking? Fametracker tells all:

Sinise is almost fifty now, so we don't begrudge him the regular paycheck and predictable hours that come with signing on to C.S.I.: NY, though we realize it pretty much signals the end of the interesting part of his career. Cop shows are where interesting actors go to die, or at least to retire. (Vincent D'Onofrio, make room at the canasta table for your new friend.) A cop show to a great actor is like a newspaper column to a legendary reporter -- you know, the guy who broke big stories back in the '70s, and now makes six figures to write twice weekly about how he still can't figure out that new-fangled barbecue!

Hush, mother, this next part is very difficult for Johann

Honey, I'm home. Mmmmm. Looks delicious. What happened in the world today? [I try not to read too much news or blog at school.]

I can't tell you. It would embolden the enemy.

Well, the good news is that Amazon wrote back to me and we can start selling our dictionaries today. I know I haven't always been there for you and the kids, honey. But this time - this time I feel we're really due for our big break. No more toiling in the thoughtmines for me if every one of our readers buys just one set -

Daddy, will you watch the Sheeta movie with me.

Quiet, honey, mommy and daddy are talking.

Daddy, will you watch the Sheeta movie with me.

[Later that night]

What would you like to read?

Circus McGurkus.

Hmmm, well this Dr. Seuss is a little hard on Frum, who this week is practically drumming his tum with jollity at the thought that Democrats might be indignant at Republican dirty tricks. But I don't suppose reading Dr. Seuss will embolden our enemies much. This Sneelock character is intrepid, isn't he?

Pandagon Guys Willing to Risk Lives For 'Brother Man'; Strongly Resemble Kris Kross in General Mack-Dadditude

Oh yeah, they are all that. But why no Matthew Yglesias in that story? And isn't it funny that the impression given by the article is that mainstream journalists are fat old white dudes à la Johnny Apple, while bloggers are all svelte and good looking? I mean, true of John and Belle Have a Blog, no doubt, but more generally?

Hey, buddy, you wanna buy a ...

We just got our 300,000th page view since moving to TypePad. It came from here, which just goes to show.

I've been thinking about setting up an Amazon Associates account. (Actually I have, but I don't know whether I'm going to use it.) Those 'buy this now' link promo dealies. How do people feel about that? From an ethical, aesthetic and political angle? Is it crass and dismaying to commercialize one's personal site - a sign of surrender to the gods of the market? I don't have paid advertising in my home. But in private life I like to urge people to buy books I like. This would be that, plus beer money at most. (More of a 'wonder whether I could actually get to $10' kind of an experiment, really.)

For example, I might recommend truly superior products like the book I quoted yesterday. (You might even search inside it if you thought I was kidding about that word.) Or this exceptionally low-priced DVD that everyone should own. Obviously 5% of $10 or less won't buy much beer, however, so perhaps I should pursue a different strategy. (Like when Calvin starts a lemonade stand - $20 a glass - and explains to Hobbes: "I've only got to sell one.') And so, if it's thrills, spills, chills and kills you crave, I can guarantee you'll find all those and more in ...

Cappucino Pudding

OK, this might be the best recipe I ever came up with. I'm going to win the Pillsbury Bake-Off with this. As long as Pillsbury makes corn starch, and as long as I substitute Tollhouse morsels for the Lindt chocolate. Um, and as long as they don't hew too closely to the whole "baked" thing. I got the idea from this recipe, which the commenters judge extremely unreliable. No wonder, because it doesn't call for you to actually cook the pudding any after tempering the eggs, so there's no way it's going to set up. Plus, it has this whole finicky caramel aspect. So, I ignored everything about the recipe except the concept, and mixed it with a good pudding recipe from Wayne Harley Brachman's excellent Retro Desserts. This was all inspired by these cool, shallow coffee cups on big saucers that I got from Ikea. Perhaps ideal would be glass coffee cups, the kind on a little pedestal that you would use to serve Irish Coffee. My grandmother had a set like that, engraved with thistles. Anyhoo, make this, people, because it is so damn tasty. The first time I served it with chocolate biscotti with brazil nuts and white chocolate chunks. Eh, it was OK. What am I saying, it was delicious. This time I used a different, much better cookie recipe; plain chocolate rounds. Also, the cream got away from me a little that first time; it should be floppier and completely cover the pudding.

Obtusely Interweaving Storylines

Galleycat notices something funny.

Moooompitcher yaah. Oh I never hoped to know the passion ...

Maud links to Kitabkhana pondering the next phase of human evolution - sort of Childhood's End meets Fanny Hill - and pulls back from the edge on grounds of boredom. One hundred strokes of the brush before bed? Reminds me of the penultimate line from a passage in Nathanael West's The Dream Life of Balso Snell. (Do you ever have that feeling?)

Balso has just made his case from the political point of view ("You who talk of liberty... Let to the breezes flap the standard ..."), the philosophical point of view ("Nature has lent you for a brief time a few organs ... let us have some fun") - for the sake of Art ("You must admit that without knowing what all the shooting is about, a sincere artist is badly ...") And the Time-argument ("Do not confuse what I shall say under this head with the theories so much in value among the metaphysicians and physicists, those weavers of the wind.") But:

Our Little Girl's All Grown Up And Alternative

Today Zoë and I rocked out to the Shins. She particularly liked a) Spinning around during the chorus of "High Horse" and b) stopping, then suddenly pogoing while they pull the rock trick of: going quiet and then suddenly rocking in "So Says I". She said, "I'm a big girl now. I don't only like to listen to Little Red Caboose. I love this music."