I Scream, You Scream

There is something to be said for doing things the old fashioned way.  When you have to work really hard for the end product, it is inevitable that it will mean more.  I own an electric ice cream maker by Cuisinart and it is great.  You simply dump in whatever mixture you want to freeze, turn it on and come back when it is done.  I am sure you would appreciate the resulting batch of homemade ice cream more than a pint you buy at the corner store.  But as a child, we never had it that easy when we wanted homemade ice cream.

My parents owned an old-fashioned ice cream maker that consisted of a large wooden bucket mounted on a base, a silver canister that housed the ice cream base, a paddle that churned the ice cream inside and a crank that had to be turned by hand.  After the bucket was loaded with ice and salt, the crank was kid powered and dad powered. 

As odd as it will sound, ice cream was often a winter treat in my family.  This was because the old style churn required a lot of ice in order to freeze the cream and we didn’t have that many trays of ice in our freezer.  Making ice cream would wait until we had nice size icicles hanging from the eaves of the house.  We would stick out heads out an upper window and knock the large icicles off the roof while one of my brothers waited below to gather up the chunks.  We then loaded the large ice chunks into a heavy canvas bag and took it down to the cellar of the house to bash it on the cement floor.  When the pieces were broken up enough to fit inside the wooden bucket the freezing could begin.  Rock salt would assist the ice in melting and make the freezing more efficient and more ice would constantly be added to the top while a constant stream of cold water drained off the bottom and into the sink.

One of us kids would crank for a while and we would trade jobs as we got tired.  As the cream started to thicken my older brothers would have to take more turns on the crank and eventually my father would take over toward the end.  The more difficult the cranking became, the closer we knew we were to the end but only mom or dad could determine that it was done.  It was best not to open the canister to check on the freezing cream because there was always a risk that of the rock salt getting in.

When they decided we were done, mom would very carefully disassemble the crank and pull the canister out of the bucket.  Next she would carefully remove the top of the can avoiding getting salt inside and pull out the paddle.  We would fight over who got the paddle after most of the ice cream was scraped off and being the baby of the family I would usually win the right to give it a lick.  The ice cream would then be transferred into a Tupperware container and put into the freezer to finish hardening.  The waiting was torture but the true treasure of the project was the few tastes we could sneak of the soft serve cream.  And long before I knew terms like savory and sweet, before all the weird combinations of ice cream we now see in stores, even then, I remember how special the ice cream tasted when there was just a little rock salt sneaking onto the spoon.