I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream for ....

ICE CREAM!!!!! If I was a betting person, I would wager that 99.96% of all readers were able to complete that phrase. It's just one of those things that we learned as children. There were a number of them. Step on a crack and you'll break your mother's back. 2, 4, 6, 8, who do we appreciate? Beans, beans, the musical fruit, the more you eat the more you .... (You know, I'd bet that most of you can finish that phrase, too!)

Of all the phrases, I'd have to say that the ice cream one was the tastiest. It was also the one that was most frequently heard on hot, summer afternoons.

In the small town where I grew up, there were a number of places that you could scream for ice cream, depending upon what you had a taste for. There was Surface's Drug Store for cones, sundaes, floats, and milkshakes. The ice cream stand had the standard cone varieties. Snow's Drive-In was for soft-serve and swirl cones.

Oh, and there was the ice cream truck. The usual scenario for this was: It's the middle of a hot afternoon. Jill, Val, Kathy and I would be in the middle of a hotly contested game of jacks or hopscotch or tag. Our mothers would be calling for us to come home. We were too preoccupied with the game to hear anything, especially our mothers. But, children have a sixth sense. It is precisely tuned to the frequency of the music coming from the ice cream truck. We could hear that truck coming for blocks. When it was about two blocks away, we would adjourn the game, rush home, convince our mothers that a) we hadn't heard them calling for us, b) an ice cream would not spoil our lunch/dinner, and c) we would come straight home after we had ice cream. This would usually result in the exact change for our favorite cold treat. We would converge on the ice cream truck as it came to a stop (usually in front of Jill's house). We would order, pay the ice cream man, and sit on Jill's porch to eat our treat. My favorite was the one that had vanilla ice cream on the inside and orange popsicle-stuff on the outside. As soon as we finished, we would resume our game and, once again, become deaf to the world. Fortunately for us, our mothers had been little girls once and still remembered how that affects the memory and hearing.

There was one other possibility - homemade ice cream - and it was the best. We would sometimes have that out at Grandma Quisenberry's farm or at a family reunion. This was quite a production. I remember it involving a wooden bucket, ice, and salt. One of the adults would set the contraption up and then it was up to us kids to crank it until our collective arms felt like they would fall off. Sometimes, I think the adults used this as a way of corralling us all in one location and enjoying the peace and quiet of the rest of the world. The rule for this was "if you didn't' crank it, you didn't eat it". Except for some reason, adults were exempt from this rule. It was probably payback for us not coming back after the ice cream truck.

Anyway, homemade ice cream is a lot easier now. There are electric ice cream makers with metal containers you put in the freezer. No ice, no salt, no cranking. Here are some that you can try:

Peach Ice Cream
Makes 1 1/2 quarts.

2 cups whipping cream
1 cup half and half
1 cup sugar
2 1/2 cups fresh peaches

Peel peaches and cut into chunks. Place 2 cups of the chunks into a food processor or blender and puree them. Pour peach puree, whipping cream, half and half, and sugar into your ice cream maker and follow the manufacture's instructions for making ice cream.

Place the remaining peach chunks into the food processor or blender and process until they are in small pieces. Add these to the ice cream about 1 to 2 minutes before it is done.

Lemon Chip Custard
Makes 1 1/2 quarts.

2 cups whipping cream
1 cup half and half
4 egg yolks
1 1/4 cups sugar
zest of one lemon
1/3 cup lemon juice
1/2 cup crushed lemon drops

Place egg yolks in a double boiler and beat. Add whipping cream, half and half, sugar, and lemon zest. Cook, stirring continuously, over boiling water until mixture thickens and will coat the back of a spoon (about 20 minutes). Place in refrigerator and cool. Pour into ice cream maker. Add lemon juice. Follow manufacturer's instructions for making ice cream. Add crushes lemon drops to mixture about 1 to 2 minutes before it is done.