An Ode to Homemade Ice Cream Cathy Shouse

Do you ever look back and miss how we used to stand around and debate the ways to make homemade ice cream? Or maybe that was just my family?

Someone would get out the old crank ice cream maker and a bag of rock salt. We’d dig up the family recipe and get going. It had to be a hand cranked affair to be genuine.

Chats like these would begin. 

Do we need thicker cream? How long should we stir it? If we didn’t switch the person on the crank soon, their arm might fall off. 

Everybody knew you needed to get to the point that the inner part would barely move to have the texture of the ice cream just right. Sacrifices had to be made and elbow grease applied.

Then after what seemed like hours, we’d divvy up the ice cream in time to hear this. “It’s really good.” 

And someone would insert more along the lines of, “This doesn’t taste like when we used to make it.” 

To be honest, I wasn’t normally even in these discussions because the older ones in the family managed that sort of thing. But I now see how great it was to listen in on them. 

How times have changed from those days. Some of the changes have definitely been for the better, and that includes that we now have internet. Without going online, how would I be communicating with you right now?

But it strikes me that we need more conversations around the ice cream cannister, whether it be wooden or metal. An afternoon of working together might go slowly, but you had a chance to look around and count blades of grass, let your mind clear.

Things are more about perfection now. We buy our ice cream from the store and can choose from a gazillion flavors. We put the ice cream on “boughten” cake.

Making cakes is also a thing of the past, and pretty much gone by the wayside where I am. It was a slippery slope for me that happened over a period of years. What about you? 

I remember getting out the Betty Crocker Cookbook, circa 1969, that was a gift, a well-used hand-me-down from my mother. This cake I’m remembering happened about the time my first-born was three or four (now over thirty). I made both the cake and the icing from scratch. Then a few years later, I told myself it was okay to use a Duncan Hines boxed cake mix (or some such brand) for a birthday party, and icing from a plastic tub. 

For the past decade or so, if I’m having anyone gathered but closest friends (and no one is that close a friend), I order a cake from a big box store’s deli. We all comment on how great it is, maybe partly because we did nothing to make it.

Most recently, I graduated right along with my college student and ordered a custom cake from someone who has put out their shingle as a baker. They make fabulous cakes, and it almost doesn’t feel wrong to pay for such beauty and such heavenly taste. Fortunately, I stopped comparing the actual cost of ingredients with the price of a purchased cake sometime in the 90s.

I find looking back on these sorts of things in my childhood to be enjoyable. I can’t help but wonder if some troubles of the world might be solved if more of us got out a bag of ICE and old recipe that used real cream and went to town cranking. Or what would working with a bag of flour (even If it now flashes a written warning not to eat it raw) and Crisco to grease the pan instead of Pam, do to make us feel better and clear our heads?

I don’t know but I’m willing to try it. But I won’t go to an extreme.

Yesterday I had a conversation with someone who said she misses the days of ironing. That comment may have inspired this post even. But maybe that’s where I draw the line. I’m not willing to go that far, as to pick up an iron. I mean, somebody said “Wrinkled is the new black,” which is not only clever but wise.

How do you feel about simpler times and do you miss anything about it?

He's got charm to spare and is making a home on the farm with his baby daughter. She’s running her bookstore while trying to get over a break-up. Can Clint and Finn find their way to one another, or will they end up broken-hearted this Easter?

When Clint Galloway finds out he's in danger of losing custody due to claims he's an unfit dad, he'll do anything to keep Lilly safe. Finn Moore's struggling to save her bookstore, while trying to embrace the single life after a bad break-up.

When Clint and Finn meet unexpectedly at her book shop, he''s under pressure and claims she's his fiancee. She agrees, but just until the custody battle's over.

As they spend time with each other and with Lilly, the lines start to blur. Clint wonders what it'd be like if his fake relationship became real.

Will Clint be able to win Finn over and create the family he never had, or will she end up breaking his heart?

Cathy Shouse is an author whose most recent book, Her Billionaire Cowboy’s Pretend Proposal, released in this month. It’s book five in her series about the Galloway Sons Farm and there’s a scene where they are sitting in the barn making homemade ice cream. 

A P.S from Cathy!

On Friday, I’m part of a free book giveaway. Her Billionaire Cowboy’s Triplets, will be free.