Ice cream memories

We Americans have been spoiled by technology. Flip a switch and the lights come on; pick up your cell phone and instantly begin to waste time watching funny cat videos. If you want a triple-mocha-Frappuccino, all you have to do is stop at a Starbucks, whip out a credit card and begin to make monthly payments on what is essentially just a fancy cup of coffee.

All of this convenience reminds me of a guy I saw on YouTube who bought a 12-volt TV for his kids. He hooked his kids’ TV to a car battery, which was hooked to an alternator, which was spun by a bicycle. His kids could watch as much TV as they wanted but had to pedal for the privilege. This eliminated their habit of sitting in front of the tube and mindlessly zoning out. There are people who didn’t rouse from their TV trances until they were married and had kids of their own.

The point is, we really have it good in this great land of ours. Perhaps we would appreciate everything more if we had to wait, or even – the horrors – perform physical work before we receive our treats.

That’s how it was when I was young. Ice cream would be a prime example.

I’m sure that my parents could have bought ice cream at the store. But why do that when you can make it at home for free? We had cream and milk from our Holsteins and eggs from our chickens. All we needed from the store was a little sugar.

But what about ice? That was also free for the taking but only at certain times of the year. My family’s ice cream consumption was generally limited to the colder months.

Spinning our ice cream machine’s hand crank was no fun. Upon reflection, its unpleasantness must have meant that this was yet another sneaky ploy that our parents used to help us kids build character.

Towards spring, when ice became scarce, we would resort to stuffing snow into the ice cream maker. Snow doesn’t have the chilling oomph that ice does, so it took a lot of snow. Snowmen were often sacrificed on the altar of ice cream.

Making our own ice cream taught us patience. I remember trying to cheat the process, popping off the lid to sneak an early taste. For some reason, ice cream glop isn’t as nearly as pleasing as honest-to-goodness ice cream.   

That all came back to me some years ago when I attended a winter farm show. It was dairy day at the show. As luck would have it, dairy day included an ice cream making contest. 

There were nine ice cream making booths at the show. Some went all-out in the design of their booths, such as the business that embraced the outdoors theme.     

Those guys really did a swell job. Their booth featured reeds and cattails along with a real, live, battery-powered duck decoy. One of the guys who was manning the booth added to the outdoorsy atmosphere by occasionally quacking on a duck call.      

Not that they needed to attract any wildlife. There were plenty of humans who were attracted to their ice cream-making activities, despite the fact that their flavor had been given the ominous moniker Hunter’s Surprise.

I chatted with one of the guys and he swore that there was no roadkill in their frozen concoction. Even so, I checked it carefully for any stray raccoon hairs before I tasted the proffered sample.

A pair of young ladies at another booth made an ice cream they called Beaver Tracks. This was quite fitting as their sponsor was a company that sells wood chips.     

I asked one of the young ladies if their ice cream contained any wood-related products. She coyly said no, but I remained suspicious. I took a bite of their Beaver Tracks ice cream and found it to be quite delicious and devoid of any woodiness. It did, however, contain small pellet-like candies that may have represented a certain beaver byproduct.

I was extremely gratified when first place in the contest was awarded to an ice cream that had been made patiently, with a hand-cranked machine.

Some years back, a scientist guy was playing with liquid nitrogen and discovered that it can be used to make ice cream. Liquid nitrogen is a jillion degrees below zero; ice cream can be made with it almost instantly.

This represents a dangerous precedent, one that can only send our great nation farther down the slippery slope. I vote that we outlaw homemade liquid nitrogen ice cream production and decree that all in-home ice cream machines be human-powered.

Jerry Nelson is a recovering dairy farmer from Volga, South Dakota. He and his wife, Julie, have two sons and live on the farm where Jerry’s great-grandfather homesteaded over 110 years ago. Feel free to email him at [email protected].