Then I made the ice cream the next day. Or I should say I tried to make the ice cream. I don’t have an ice cream maker, fancy or plain, so David suggests a method for making it without one. Don’t know if it was just my freezer, but I could only get it slushy, I just couldn’t get it to go even a little firm. Since my intention was to share it (I don’t cook much unless I’m sharing), I got a big bag of ice, chilled a steel bowl, nestled it in the ice, and drove the slushy ice cream to New Buffalo to dole out to friends.

By the time I got to door #2 (of 3), it was soup. Very, very tasty soup, but still soup. I’ve had my eye on an electrical one for a while now (not the first one, the second one), it just hasn’t been a priority. Considering my family’s great fondness for making homemade ice cream (they’re on their 3 or 4th White Mountain hand-cranked machine), I’m surprised I haven’t bought a maker yet. An ice and salt hand-cranked one wouldn’t be practical for me right now. I certainly remember many, hot summer evenings at my grandparent’s ranch, taking my turn at the crank, enjoying bowl after bowl of vanilla ice cream (almost always vanilla), with my mother’s chocolate sauce, rocking away on the their front porch, listening to the crickets at dusk.

Ok, snap out of it.

So I really need to get something, because the no-maker method didn’t work well for me, especially when I needed to transport the end result anywhere except to my own living room.

Mostly it would be cool if my family gave the caramel ice cream a try, it’s really, really good.