Winter time meant ice cream making time.
Mom would stand at our Pioneer Maid wood cookstove and cook up the ice cream pudding while the boys were sent outside to fill several five gallon buckets with packed snow.
There was always an air of excited as Mom filled the ice cream can with the pudding. She set it in the freezer tub and we filled the space between the can and the tub with snow and dumped salt over it. Taking the laundry stick we poked the snow down while someone else started cranking.
We kept adding snow and salt as needed while continuously cranking the handle.
Midway through the excitement would start wearing off as we grew tired of all the cranking. We kept taking turns, careful to keep the handle turning as we switched out.
Once the ice cream was firm enough that we could no longer crank we removed the can, took the dasher out and all gather around to enjoy several spoonsful of delicious ice cream that was stuck to it.
Mom put a lid on the can and put it back into the salty snow mixture to keep it nice and frozen until we were ready to eat.
It was always a treat, even it it took a lot of hard work to prepare.
I also grew up having homemade ice-cream only in winter. My parents had an old wooden bucket ice-cream freezer with a hand crank. Oh the memories.
ReplyDeleteWe used to make ice-cream a couple times each summer. Once it got too hard for us kids to turn, my dad would give it a couple of cranks, and tell us we'd "just about got it this time" and let it sit in the ice for a while. You are right; it was hard work, but the ice-cream tasted all the better for our efforts.
ReplyDeleteU explained the process in quite a delish way - We rarely make icecream at home but when we made it was all excitemtn during childhood summer days
ReplyDeleteDropping by from a to z http://afshan-shaik.blogspot.com/
I love homemade ice cream. Of course we never did it the way you did, that sounds so cool. We hve shiny machine that makes it.. still good and since we have diabetics here... its really a big deal for us.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure that ice-cream tasted even better for all the work you put in to making it.
ReplyDelete