When I was growing up I would spend a lot of time with my grandmother. I used to spend the night. I loved that. I could be by myself and get spoiled rotten. I remember at night, before bed, she would fix ice cream.
She had these great sundae glasses. They were more bowls than glasses. But she would make floats in them. Sometimes she would make root beer floats but most of the time we had cream soda. If you’re not familiar with cream soda you don’t know what you’re missing.
My grandmother would buy Big Red Cream Soda. Big Red, as its name implies, is red. Mama would mix this with ice milk. Ice milk is lower in calories than ice cream. At least that’s what we were lead to believe. But the cream soda would form ice crystals on the ice milk. Then she would top it with Cool Whip. Oh, my mouth is watering now just thinking about it.
We would have Hershey Syrup sundaes too. We would get cherries on top of those. When the ice milk was melting at the bottom of the glass we would swirl it all together until it was mushy and have soft serve ice cream.
I loved these treats but I didn’t inherit my grandmother’s sweet tooth, my sister did. I think growing up she could eat ice cream for every meal and then have it for dessert. When she went away to college she would walk to Baskin Robbins and get a Matterhorn which is 7 scoops of ice cream and two toppings. I guess we all have our demons. Mine was Whoppers at Burger King.
My other grandmother, my dad’s mother, made the best homemade ice cream you ever put in your mouth. She always made banana ice cream though because my Uncle Joe loved banana ice cream and because he churned the ice cream he got to choose the flavor.
One year we got my dad an electric ice cream freezer for his birthday and we were taking it out to my aunt’s house for a cook-out. Dad decided he wanted strawberry ice cream since Uncle Joe didn’t have to churn it. So all the way to my aunt’s house we looked for fresh strawberries. This was back when you could buy fresh fruit like that on street corners. But no one had strawberries and Daddy didn’t want any from the store. He wanted fresh. We ended up with banana ice cream. I didn’t mind, I loved it.
When I moved to Fancy Farm it seemed as though we had home made ice cream all the time. I never made it. Jimmy would get a mix and add fruit. But I wanted home made, from scratch, ice cream. I found a recipe in my Southern Living cookbook. It was banana but it had to be cooked. I didn’t remember my grandmother cooking her ice cream but I was pretty young when she made it. We were having a family party, had everyone over, and they were making so much fun of me and my fancy recipe.
It took forever to get done. When it finally did it didn’t look very good. It was pretty runny. It didn’t smell very good. But my wonderful brother-in-law, Danny, wasn’t phased by it. He got a big bowl and filled it up. He took a huge bite and the look on his face was priceless. His eyes got huge. I think he turned green. He ran outside, I’m sure to spit it out. But I heard he tossed his cookies too.
I’ve never ever thought about making home made ice cream again. I leave that to the professionals.