When we were in the USA, friends introduced us to


“Coldstone Creamery Ice Cream”. We aren’t sure if they did us a favor or not, because we got hooked! At one store we saw a poster that said something like, “Real friends don’t let their friends eat store bought ice cream.” We chuckled at that, because here in the Solomons, friends who eat at our house are never served store bought ice cream!

We have a hand crank ice cream machine and Tim has ice cream making down to a science! Tonight was his first time to make ice cream since we’ve returned to the Solomons.

Tim makes a cooked custard type ice cream which we refrigerates for 24 hours before he starts cranking it. He usually cranks the ice cream at night when the outside temperatures are cooler. When the ice cream is finished, he stores it in our deep freezer until it’s ready to serve. Tim makes the ice cream ahead of time so it has time to firm up before we serve it.

The girls love when Tim makes ice cream and have talked about falling asleep at night to the sound of dad cranking the ice cream in the carport below the house as they dream about the delicious ice cream they will eat the next day.

We are preparing for our Valentine’s Party on Wednesday night which we host each year. This year we are having a scaled down party and only serving dessert instead of preparing a formal sit down dinner for our guests – we have hosted up to 22! Next year we’ll do it up big again, but for this year, our friends will be delighted to savor Tim’s ice cream again after a year’s absence.

This morning you would have found something interesting in my oven. No, we aren’t going to eat it. It’s ‘indicator silica gel’.

In the tropics, it can be a challenge to take care of cameras and binoculars and keep them dry. If they are left in a humid environment, a fungus can start growing on the lenses which ‘eats’ into the protective coating. While the lenses can be cleaned professionally, the lenses are never the same afterward.

We attempt to keep our cameras and binoculars safe by keeping them in an air tight box with the silica gel beads in a sock. When this type of silica gel is dry, it is blue. As it absorbs moisture, it turns to a light pink. Occasionally, we take the silica out of the box and heat it in the oven to dry it out again. That’s what I have in my oven this morning.