I scream ice cream

You can’t even compare store-bought ice cream with homemade ice cream.

Where I grew up in western Oklahoma, homemade ice cream was as much a part of a summer Sunday as church. Men wore their wool church suits all day, no matter how hot it got. And, after dinner, which was at noon and, in the summer, always fried chicken, it was time to make ice cream.

Somebody went to the icehouse for a big block of ice which was wrapped in a gunny sack and crushed with a sledge hammer.

The cream mixture was poured into the metal container, which was placed in the wood freezer and the iron handle carefully attached. Crushed ice and salt were packed around, the gunny sack folded and put on top. If a small child was handy, she was plopped on the top to help weight it down while the men took turns slowly turning the handle. The lucky small child heard a lot of stories and jokes, adding considerably to her knowledge of the adult world.

When the handle ground to a standstill, the freezer was covered with an old quilt and left to ripen awhile.

When the grownups got tired of hearing the kids ask, “When’s it going to be ready?”, they carefully removed the lid, flicked off traces of salt and grease from the handle and, AMBROSIA! Conversation stopped while young and old savored each delicious spoonful.

People don’t make homemade ice cream much anymore. It’s too easy to pick up a carton of something labeled ice cream at the supermarket. But it’s not ice cream. Read the ingredients: milkfat, non-fat milk, corn sweetener, mono and diglycerides, guam gum, locust bean gum, polysorbate 80, calcium, carrageenan and artificial color. GUAM GUM? Really…

There’s no reason why people can’t enjoy the real thing today. For the cost of a few gallons of store-bought, you can buy a freezer and they last a long time. You can pick up ice already crushed at the nearest convenience store. You freeze ice cream outdoors in a shady spot or under a tree. You sweat a lot because you don’t make ice cream in cold weather. You need somebody congenial to talk to and take turns cranking. It’s nice to have a family or company to help eat it.

It’s supposed to be a ritual so that by the time you talk about making it, hunt up all the parts to the freezer, stir it up, pour it in and crank until hard, your tastebuds are tingling.

There’s nothing like that first sweet, smooth, tongue-numbing spoonful. Somebody always eats it too fast and gets a sudden, stabbing headache while everyone else laughs.

Where you can maybe eat only one scoop of store-bought ice cream, you can slide down bowls of homemade. It satisfies the stomach and the spirit. It slows down time. There’s no way you can hurry and make and eat homemade ice cream.

The recipe is simple: milk, cream, eggs, sugar and vanilla. You don’t cook it, you don’t put in junket or other additives. The milk, cream and eggs must be the freshest you can get and the vanilla pure, not imitation. Mexican vanilla is perfect.

My stepmom was one of the best cooks in Woodward County and here is her recipe for Vanilla Ice Cream. Beat six large eggs. Mix in two heaping cups of sugar, a pinch of salt, two cups of cream and a teaspoon vanilla. Add milk to fill freezer can. Makes one gallon. Freeze till hard. Eat.

If you want to live a fuller life, make homemade ice cream.

Mary McClure lives in Lawton and writes a weekly column for The Lawton Constitution.