Summer has officially started.

For Father's day, we made my dad homemade vanilla ice cream. It all started at the grocery store when the clerk charged us $0.05 for a vanilla bean because we bought it in bulk and was so light that the scale didn't register it. What else could we do?
We distracted my dad so we could make the ice cream. He and my mom went to Costco while my sisters and I found the ice cream maker and looked through the entire internet trying to find the owner's manual. Finally, the custard was brought out of the fridge and put into the bucket. Then... we ran out of ice.
It all turned out okay because the bucket with the custard wasn't full, so we didn't need to fill the ice all the way to the top. I couldn't wait for dessert!
At first I was just making a caramel sauce with the "Basic Caramel" recipe I found in the back of a cookbook. But no, the recipe was for sculpting caramel, which it never said directly in the recipe. Now I was left with a pot of caramel that was hardened so much that you could drop a metal spoon in it and it wouldn't dent. Just a tiny "clink" could be heard.
Under the category of FAIL, perhaps? That gives me a new tag. Fail. I hope I don't have to use it often. :(
I heated the caramel on the stove and it was now a semi-liquid-ness consistency. I pulled a little piece out. Oh. It kept stretching and stretching and.... then it snapped, because it had cooled. I had a little piece of caramel hair. Brilliant! I stretched some more caramel and had a parchmented baking sheet full of caramel hair. It was then hid in the guest room bathroom, waiting for desert time.
It came after a meal of baby-backs marinated in Apple Chipotle BBQ bath from Sweetwater Spice Co. and coleslaw and curly fries and The Simpsons Movie. I won't even get started on that, don't worry.
My dad was so surprised! Well, not really. It was given away when he saw the outer bucket on the deck, filled with salt. He loved it though. The caramel threads didn't taste very caramel-y. They tasted like burnt sugar and coffee. Not sweet, but bitter.
We used Alton Brown's Serious Vanilla Ice Cream. It was rich, creamy, and delicious! I would really recommend it. Oh, wait. I just did.
Here it is! http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/serious-vanilla-ice-cream-recipe/index.html
You know it's summer when the ice cream maker is running.
Happy Summer!
Lexie