Milani Home

www.milanihome.com

I have always been artsy, creative and somewhat whimsical in my style. When I was in college one of my best friends was an art major, ceramics and pottery to be exact. I decided that for my art elective, I would take pottery. I really enjoyed it. It was a nice stress reliever for me. I never created anything that anyone (other than my mother) would appreciate, but that’s what art is all about. My friend on the other hand is really talented and has gone on to continue her craft and wants to sell her pottery. She has opened my eyes to pottery, and how it isn’t all brown and blue bulky pieces that look alike. A new trend I am seeing is a “fresh” approach. I see more and more pieces that appeal to a younger and more unique demographic. But… it is still not the norm.

I was playing around online and BAM! Oh my gosh, I’m in love! I found the most amazing and unique pottery pieces online from one of my favorite sites (www.uncommongoods.com) …. but the artist (Tammy Milani) turns out to be from Greensboro as well! What a small world it is.

When I work with couples and they ask me about registering, I tell them some simple advice. I think you should register somewhere everyone can go and afford (like Target, Khols, etc.), somewhere where you can register for china and dishes (Macy’s, Dillards, etc.) and then a specialty place that offers something unique and special to you (Williams Sonoma if you’re a cook, a landscaper, an art gallery, pottery studio, etc.) By doing this…. it gives your guests options and gives you a little of everything!

 The pieces from Milani Home would certainly be your something unique that would give you pieces for your home that will stay with you for as long as your marriage! I just love them!

And if anyone is wondering what to get me for Christmas…. Anything shown in this blog will be fine! J I want to get married… just to register for the cooking dishes!

One of the fundamental rites of passage for any engaged couple is to ask for and receive a machine that enables you to prepare foods you’ve never thought of making yourself. Things like waffles, bread, frozen margaritas, and fried candy bars are yours for the making if only you register the right way.

Already owning a bread machine – which we use only to make banana bread and only when we have some over-ripe bananas laying about – and cowering in fear at the prospect of owning a deep fryer, the wife and I chose the ever-so-sensible ice cream machine.

As stereotypically lazy Americans, we were surprised that making ice cream actually takes work, even with our newfangled technology. Often things have to be heated or melted or mixed or strained by hand before the motorized monstrosity even comes into play. Such a revelation would have led lesser couples to excommunicate such a contraption to the back of the cupboard.

But we persevered.

After some unsuccessful experiments with frozen yogurt and “light” ice cream, however, the wife threw in the towel. Heavy dairy is not her bag.

So I persevered.

But only a couple times a year when I’m alone and feel like making the effort (that sounds dirty, sorry). One such opportunity presented itself last month when I decided to finally put the instant coffee I had bought for this very purpose to use.

I found this recipe for Coffee Oreo Cookie Mount Gay Ice Cream one day after work and thought I’d give it a shot. And by shot, I don’t mean the Mount Gay rum. That ingredient was immediately jettisoned in keeping with my long-held “no alcohol in dessert” decree.

The addition of egg yolks make this more of a frozen custard than a straight-on ice cream. This recipe was also my first venture into “tempering” territory and I think it went surprisingly well (i.e. the eggs did not get cooked by the warm cream mixture).

The one thing I would change would be the time of Oreo addition. When I added them right before pouring the liquid into the machine, the cookies broke down and became part of the ice cream. So instead of little bits of cookie flecking the coffee ice cream, I ended up with a true coffee/Oreo hybrid.

This is similar to the melding, at a molecular level, of Seth Brundle and the fly in David Cronenberg’s remake of The Fly. Below is a picture of my ice cream and Brundle-fly for comparison.

To fix this, I would wait until the last five minutes of the hardening process before adding the cookie chunks. This way they would get mixed into the ice cream without falling apart.

And thus, to finish with the comparison, you have what the ice cream should look like next to the original Fly: a garden-variety human with a few insect parts mixed in.

Ice cream and sci-fi: two great tastes that taste great together!