Homemade Ice Cream and Summers Gone By

photo courtesy of wral.com

Most people who know me, know that I am not the world’s best cook or baker. There are a few things that I can make well and I can probably count all of them on one hand.

Yet, still somehow I manage to amaze my kids and myself from time to time, most times it has little to do with food. Last night was one of those nights.

Somewhere in our travels we had aquired an old electric ice cream maker. I have no clue where it came from but it looked like a wooden barrel with the motor attachment with a handle and a metal container with a lid and large whisk or spatula that sits inside. I’m sure it moved into the new house when we did five years ago but I never had the inkling to get it out and really find out how it worked. Shoot, I didn’t even know if it had all the parts to it (or how many parts went to an ice cream maker like this one), let alone if it ACTUALLY did work.

Feeling a little out of my element but brave nonetheless I mentioned to the hubs how I’d like to have some homemade ice cream and why don’t we get the one we have out and see what happens. I hadn’t had homemade ice cream since I was… well let’s just say Bug was very young and even then I’m not sure it wasn’t even longer than that.

He must have took my thinking out loud as “send me to the store so I can buy the stuff to make homemade ice cream” cause that’s exactly what he did. Before I knew it, I was looking up recipes for ice cream (milk or half and half? I even asked my friends on twitter about that).

With a few good recipes (I’m assuming, they looked fine to me) in hand, the kids and I finally made our first batch of homemade ice cream (after a week of the hubs asking if I’d made it yet) last night. What I got was for more than I expected.

I guess my kids think that all I really know how to do is sit at the computer, type, yell a lot, and make chore lists because the looks I got were priceless  when I pulled the icy metal container out of the ice cream maker and revealed that not only did it look like ice cream but it smelled like ice cream. Each one of them stood around with their tongues literally hanging out, waiting for a taste.

See what they didn’t know was that home made ice cream was a integral part of my summers growing up. My grandfather always had a bit of a sweet tooth and on any given day you could search his workshop for treats, cookies and snacks. However, in the summer, oh… in the summer, I had a sixth sense for the ice cream maker (or grandma would tip me off to get me out of the house) .  I’d sit and watch him turn the crank and give it an occasional stir until I was literally praying for the ice cream to be done before I died waiting. Much like my own kids, I would wait, tongue dragging to the floor for the first taste of the rich and creamy vanilla ice cream that would emerge from the cold, frozen barrel. Looking back, I don’t recall the summers of sunburns, bee stings, or hot sleepless nights, but the first batches of grandpa’s ice cream are forever etched in my memory.

Have you ever eaten or smelled, or drank anything that instantly snapped you back in time? When I lifted the spoon to my mouth last night to taste what I hoped didn’t just LOOK like ice cream, I was immediately nine years old again sitting in the workshop with my grandpa watching him turn the crank on the ice cream maker and listening to him explain the process. If I was lucky enough, I would get to turn the crank (always an honor) while he added milk, sugar and cream.

As the ice cream made its way past my taste buds, summers flew by until I was 17 again, not a care in the world, sitting on my grandpa and grandma’s back porch with my cousin and my boyfriend, enjoying grandpa’s ice cream, talking about our plans for the evening and begging him for another bowl when there wasn’t a trace to be left between the three of us. Summers full of memories and ice cream rushed up to hug me in those first few licks of the spoon.

I don’t ever pretend to be an amazing mom, sometimes I’m just really good at faking it and then others, like last night, I’m praying that moments like our adventure in ice cream making, would last forever. I also pray that I taught them a little more than how to make ice cream even though I know they won’t know it until they are making ice cream with their own children one day.

Most of all, I’m hoping we’ve started a tradition that I can thank my grandpa for. Were he here today, I probably never would have taken the time to dust off a piece of my past or make a new memory with my own kids.

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3. Mother’s Day: Renegotiating my Motherhood Contract for 2009-2010