...national ice cream day...

It has not been a very adventurous week. Mostly, the wild and crazy adventures have been happening in my mind, as I read and daydream and imagine. So, maybe adventurous, but in a different sort of way. Forgive me for falling behind?

As today is National Ice Cream Day (yippee!) it seemed like the perfect opportunity to whip out our ice cream maker wedding gift and put it to work. I found a Pinterest recipe I'd been hoarding for quite some time, purchased the ingredients, read and reread the instructions, and cautiously began.

After warming the milk, cream and sugar, I sliced the vanilla bean length-wise, and scraped out all the teeny, tiny little beans. I whipped the egg yolks and carefully mixed it all together, whisking as I poured. Then, I strained the entire mixture and put it all back on the heat, stirring it with a spatula while I waited for it to thicken. Which took over 30 minutes...30 minutes! Standing, stirring, waiting. (This better be worth it, or it might be my last cooking adventure for a while.)

I impatiently waited for the whole thing to chill as I cleaned the kitchen, dining room and living room, checking and stirring it every 10 minutes. When it was finally ready, I pulled out the mixer and the attachments that were chilling in the freezer and put them together. Suddenly, I realized the frozen “bowl” that was to hold the ice cream mixture had some small specs of dirt in it, so I grabbed a slightly damp paper towel and proceeded to wipe out the frozen inside.

Sometimes we do things without thinking through the consequences. We see a problem and we immediately want to fix it, so we proceed in the best way we know how. It's our knee-jerk reaction. Still, I should have known better.

I should have known that that damp paper towel would cling to the sides of that frozen bowl and shred into a million little pieces. I should have recognized the futility in attempting to scrape it all off with my fingernails. I started to panic just a tinge, until I decided to rinse it out with some cool water, which allowed the tiny paper smidgeons to detach from the sides and spill out. Phew! All was not lost.

It's like magic!

Again, impatient as ever, I watched as the mixer spun round and round. After 15 minutes, there was only a slight change. Quite nearly annoyed, I sat down and began reading my book, until I could hear the mixer start to slow down, like it was having difficulty spinning round. When I look at it again, it had doubled in size. I let it mix a bit longer, and then spooned it all out into a tupperware and stuffed it deep in the freezer. 

It's taken most of the day to do this, so if it's not amazing, and I mean, amazing, I don't know that this will be happening again.

Here's to hoping my hubby is pleased!

Friends, if you haven't celebrated National Ice Cream Day, there is still time. Go enjoy! I'm sure that ice cream doesn't have calories on this special day. (I mean, I'm pretty sure...)

Update: Though it's not completely frozen, we taste-tested the ice cream. Andy's response: So creamy! Feeling more adventurous due to my success, I thought I'd tackle another Pinterest recipe - cookie cups. Yeah, those didn't turn out so well. 

You win some, you lose some...