@ the top of my mind

...is cheesecake ice cream! K and I made a delicious batch last night as our first trial with the ice cream maker we just got as a belated wedding gift. And to be honest, I think K and I love ice cream, deserts, and preparing foods so much that I think we may actually use this thing more than once a year. Believe it or not, it is actually sort of practical for us to have it. Let me tell you why. I love ice cream and milkshakes. So first and foremost, this will be a major motivator. Second, it only takes about 30 minutes to make a simple ice cream start to finish. (well if you don't include freezing the mixing bowl. So it would take us roughly that amount of time to go to the grocery store and back to buy ice cream. And third, we often buy various dairy products in bulk because mainly K bakes so much for others. So we often already have some sort of cream on hand. And instead of letting it go to waste, why not make some ice cream and freeze it! So as you can see, it actually is practical to have an ice cream maker!

But back to the cheescake ice cream. It was delicious. It was very heavy because the first two ingredients are 2 soft cheeses, followed by whole milk and sugar. So needless to say, you'll get pretty full on just half a cup of this stuff. I tried to eat a heaping cup and I couldn't finish it. This particular recipe is a bit heavy for my taste, but it would be good to garnish a hot brownie or maybe it'd be good in milkshake form because this recipe is also very sweet so watering it down with milk wouldn't hurt it! I want to try to make a hybrid of this recipe and vanilla ice cream one day to see if I can make it feel a little lighter. I could also use 2% milk possibly or maybe light cream cheese, but who knows if the lower fat content and higher water ratio would make it develop more annoying ice crystals!

The next thing on my mind is beef jerky. Can you tell I'm hungry? I haven't eaten lunch yet and I've got cravings on my mind! I want to try making jerky at home because the stuff you normally get at the store is super tough and dry. I have had very good jerky over the years, but I am not sure how to make it so that it doesn't feel so dry, or even tough for that matter. There are brands out there that are neither tough nor dry. Well all jerky is chewy to some extent, but I don't want to have to feel like I'm going to lose a tooth pulling it apart. So maybe this weekend or the next I will venture into attempting to make the perfect jerky. But I have a couple chores that I really should take care of first, one is re-staining the deck for that nice winter coat, and the second item is putting a clear bra on my car. I need to protect it from chips, and these sticky applications can take a long time to do right. So really I need to figure out how to do all this and make jerky, because that's what I really want!

The last thing on my mind is glassdoor.com. This web site helps people compare salaries and reviews of companies. I heard about it on CNN this morning and I really wish I hadn't. I have this thing where I feel like I didn't try hard or do well in life. It is a common re-occurring theme and I have to struggle with it a lot (see last blog post). Just seeing what the average salary was for Google and Facebook in California made me wish I had tried harder in school and gotten a job at one of these places instead of "settling" for Motorola in the job that I initially got. Even the Google jobs in Chicago pay more starting than I currently make. But there are two problems with this envy. One, I can't change where I am today, I can only work hard to make sure I do my best in the future. Two, even if I had applied myself 100% in school, I am not sure that I would've been Google material. I like to think of myself as smart, but I swear to you there are varying levels of smart, and the people that get paid more than my current salary right when they graduate college are the top tier of smart. Some are certified geniuses. So why do I let myself get so down about not being the best in the world? I will never always do better than everybody, and honestly even if I did work at Google I'd probably still be jealous of somebody or something. This is a major struggle for me. Logic tells me that I am doing well in life and that I am working hard, but my emotions tell me that I am a huge dummy and haven't tried hard enough in life. It's frustrating!

But at least I know that I have a loving wife to come home to that can cheer me up even on my gloomiest days. And it's things like that that really matter in life. I keep reminding myself that. It's important to remember to enjoy what you have going for you in life. I really am looking forward to that cheesecake ice cream sitting in the freezer, and I am also looking forward to having my car back from the shop. I'm looking forward to meeting with my church small group today and just having a good conversation. I am looking forward to seeing where life takes me.