Making ice cream flavored with vanilla bean, Maker's Mark, Earl Grey and cinnamon.

I approve of this

-ish. They tend to be improvised. I am currently making spiced 'taters, which involves the following:

-a good lot of vegetable oil; take yer pick what. Right now, I'm using, well, plain old vegetable oil. I prefer Earth Balance, melted down, but that is slightly pricy. Olive oil, etc. works as well. I prefer Earth Balance, the soy-free one, for flavor.

-several spice blends. I'm using Penzey's Forward! and Arizona Dreaming (extra bold black pepper, paprika, onion, garlic, turmeric; and ancho chile, onion, garlic, citric acid, lemon peel, chipotle, red pepper, jalapeño, cocoa, natural smoke flavoring respectively) along with adobo (low sodium, with pepper. The normal one is too salty in quantity) and Italian seasoning, along with lemon peel as of late. I may add an extra bit of pepper- or peppers.

And an onion, or a portion of one, whose size is appropriate to the quantity of potatoes.

Preheat oven or toaster oven to 425ºF or thereabouts.

Select appropriate quantity of 'taters. Cut 'em up into whatever size works. I chop them up into bits that tend not to be more than 1" long and 3/8"- 1/2" thick.

Coat bottom of pan, glass dish or casserole dish with your choice of oil. Add 'taters; add spices, add more oil on top. Now, you can add the additional oil first; the order doesn't matter. If you want 'em with a little more citrus tang- this works better than you'd think (think Greek potatoes) perhaps add a bit of lemon juice, or add it later. You're going to be stirring these up a bunch anyhow to keep them from burning to the bottom. Depending on what you use for the oil and in what quantity, you can make them crispy or not-so-crispy. Also, time. These take a while, but they're decent as lazyfood as besides the initial prep, there isn't much to do.

Get yerself a good spatula and get under these bastards every 15-20 minutes or so, flip 'em around, over, whatevs. It is not imperative all touch the bottom of the pan/dish at any given time; most probably won't.

Give it an half an hour to an hour, depending on your textural preference. Then cut up yer onion. Dice said onion with a bigass knife and add it in; bust out yer spatula to mix things up. Also, if you want to add in other things, like, say, peppers or minced garlic or the like, this may be your time.

Continue cooking until desired texture is achieved. I have experimented with adding lemon juice toward the end.

Serve in whatever way you see fit. As a big pile o' stuff on its own, with a sauce on the side, covered in sauce, with chili, etc. You have a big mound of spicy potatoes; do what thou wilt.

This can work well with fry sauce, which is apparently a Mormon thing? my ex found out about. It's basically a mix of ketchup and mayo (works with veggie mayo, too; I would know) that's combined 'til it's orange. Stick fork in potatobit, dip in sauce, eat. Ketchup and hot sauce (as I'm from Buffalo, Frank's Red Hot works here) ain't a bad mix to dip them in either. Slathered with chili and you have a proper meal. Serve 'em as a side to your whatevers if you'd like; they make seasoned fries their bitch. Though a fork is required. I suppose you could make fries out of them if you cut them differently.

The lemon, incidentally, is a recent addition to my improv recipe.

When it comes to quantities of spices, 'taters are total sluts that can take anything you give them and usually want a lot. I don't even measure; I just eyeball the bastards. It seems heavy at first, but with all the flipping it covers all sides.

Jesus wept, that sounds delicious. Maker's and Earl Grey are two of the best beverages ever, Maker's already has the vanilla note, vanilla and cinnamon work... That sounds like a really good combination flavour-wise. It all makes sense together.

I would wear that as a perfume/cologne too; not even kidding. Well, minus the ice cream. I've used whiskey as a fixative for bergamot oil before and it works.

Getting the keys to my new house today

Truefact. Taters got me through the wintertimes, more than one year in recent history. Taters, Carrots, Kale, Whole Chickens, Dried Beans, and errr, not a whole lot else.

Rootveg are wifout a doubt my favored veg. I am also not terribly picky about how i get them, as long as i get a lot of them. The most gigantic sack in the store was frequently purchased by me. What is that 10, 20 pounds?

Did it make correctly?

One of the more delicious things that i tried to make was when we tried to make rum raisin icecream at my sisters house, but used double proof rum and let the raisins soak in it too long.

The alcohol content of the stuff wouldn't allow it to freeze correctly at all, so it ended up being this crazy deadly delicious softserve/melty/boozy icecream slushy sort of thing. It wasn't ice cream, but it was: fucking delicious.

holy fuck you guys are coming up with some nomilicious shit here.

Funny I had just seen Maker's post a recipe of Maker Mark Cupcakes with Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting. Again there you go with vanilla and cinnamon...

Roasted potatoes are about my favorite eat in life. Delicious.

RE: http://www.makersmark.com/recipes/30-ma ... e-frosting

oh fuck I have been on an avocado kick lately. Cut that lil sucker in half, add a pinch of salt and nom fucking nom....

Does a muffhugger have to slap a duck?

It properly turned into ice cream, though on the fluffier side. Was delicious, very prominent whiskey flavor and a good amount of vanilla and cinnamon. Earl Grey was subtle but there and complementary. Doing another batch with less whiskey as it is pretty rich and we are playing with the balances. I feel a fraction of a minibuzz off of the mildly substantial amount I just ate.

Nice. That sounds absolutely delicious. What an excellent combination of things.

My neighbors appear to be gone for the weekend, so I've been singing. I'm attempting to straighten out the upper part of my range. Past G above middle C, it turns nasty real fast as I am not a tenor. I've discovered even in head voice (I don't know if I'm doing a proper falsetto or not; I think I have a good octave worth of it? But oddly not for the highest notes.) to avoid sounding like Brian Johnson you really, really need proper breath support and are pushing a great deal from the diaphragm. I did manage to force a high D, though that sounds like a dying cat. My B is at least strong enough I can reach it with only minor effort, though the tone leaves me less than satisfied. The same applies to the B three octaves below. The low C is okay, if quiet. I might be able to force Bb on occasion in the same way I could force D- I've done it. I don't think I'm capable of A without it turning into death metal. Shit just ends around B. Likewise, D was a real stretch going up from a shaky C.

I don't know why I am pushing myself to have the range of a basso profondo and an alto. Lord knows I don't have the tonal qualities of either, and there isn't anything particularly musically useful about the extremes. I suppose it's like sweep picking. It might come in handy at some point to get a thing across properly. Also, singers really pushing their ranges who have some power and control can produce really haunting effects; things like the countertenor in the one Cirque Du Soleil show (I forget which- yes, I'm a fan ) who sang up in the soprano range, or that Basso Profondo Of Old Russia CD that has dudes nailing low G or F in this inhuman, sepulchural and powerful voice...

Yeah, those people have that built-in and don't need microphones or amplification. I'm just some shithead rock singer. But I make things in a studio, not a concert hall; rough-and-ready is more what I want anyhow, and I'll stick a mic all up in that. I create fake things. And I can draw inspiration from real sources.

Finally received my replacement Vox bass amplug and it actually works properly this time. Sounds pretty fuggin good, easily good enough for a practice "amp" (when ran through one of my monitors) and recording device - seems better than amplitube.

Solid SDoTD: http://www.musiciansfriend.com/stupid/?icid=200510

Would snag that if I had a realjob, even if only as a backup/alternate-tuning guitar for live work.

Anything currently made by Fender is good as far as I can tell; pickups of known quality already there. Neck is the proper shape and radius. Re: aesthetics, it's the Little Black Dress of Rock And Roll.

A no-lose for anyone with five bills to blow. And I know I like getting thousand-dollar guitars for half-price.

Definitely nice for a $900something guitar going for $500. The bucker neck setup is pretty classy, and i think i might put my main MIM back to that setup again.

SD '59 in this SDoTD is a good pickup for that use too.

For basically New MIM money, this is a bit nicer than any MIM.

I also find the black/black combo to be quite klaße.

I want it. If I could sell off the AC-15 and the G-Major today I would order it.

A humbucker or a Strat pickup is an improvement in the neck for my tastes. A Tele lives and dies by the bridge pickup, and, to a point, the bridge itself. And I've always liked the '59s; they are a known quantity and make a fine neck pickup in anything. A Tele is not a a Strat, where swapping out the neck pickup is potentially sinful.

Plain black is never the wrong choice.

Working on a boss righteous cover of Cocaine Blues by Johnny Cash right now. Stoked on this shit.