Homemade Ice Cream and Boiled Peanuts

Disappointed. Last year I made a pact with myself to have a session of ice cream churning. The next generation has never seen home-made ice cream being made, never cranked the handle on the churn, never packed the ice nor salted it.

Little Miss Phillips and “the boys” need to see how it can be done.

Adults added rock salt to the ice. Some were heavy dumpers, others were more exact.

I was an adult before I discovered why salt was added in the first place. It appears that salt lowers the melting point of ice, drawing more heat from the cream mixture and allowing it to freeze.

And who figured that out? It will come down to which recipe will prevail.

The Kansas Woman’s family recipe is different from my family method.

My family used a cooked custard and light on the cream. The Kansas method is heavy, way heavy, on the cream and had a different taste. It was always vanilla.

The Kansas in-laws kept cows that were heavy cream producers, mostly Jerseys. My grandfather’s cows were just easy to catch, usually from someone culling the herd.

To be called ice cream, a frozen mixture must contain 10% milk fat. Many places sell a frozen soft serve dairy dish that contains 5% cream and maybe 40% air. I don’t know what air tastes like.

When folks looked for a reason to get together, they used what they had.

Ice cream socials were a community event, but I only know of one community ice cream social still held annually anymore.

This year there were five tubs of homemade ice cream, with the most popular being vanilla and chocolate.

I found a survey from three years ago rating the most popular flavors of ice cream. The most popular was chocolate at 17%, vanilla at 15%, strawberry and butter pecan at 8%.

My favorite flavor, butter pecan, rarely has any added butter. The dominate flavor comes from maple flavoring, and most brands are stingy with pecans.

Ice cream socials are a summer event, like a new crop of peanuts demands an annual peanut boiling. This is mainly a south Georgia event, but while green peanuts are in the stores, you can hold one anywhere.

There is only one of those that cycles around every year, and they are true to the custom of boiling green peanuts in a cast iron wash pot of salted water.

To satisfy the tastes of new arrivals, they have included a second pot of peanuts boiling in the salted water with a couple of smoked ham hocks for flavor.

My traditional bent makes me lean away from the second pot, but I admit it would make a fine side dish at supper. joenphillips@yahoo.com