Arlo and Janis by Jimmy Johnson for August 01, 2021

*Unless you have kids or grandkids ready to crank their arms off!

Just buy it at the store.

That is why use electric!

There’s nothing better than homemade ice cream. If made correctly of course.

My mother made it with canned evaporated milk. and that’s what it tasted like. So now it is better than what I remember.

Ario; Have you come down with Covid19.

Covid effect or age.

Oh Yes It Does! 8^ )

Like many here this takes me back. Growing up my father’s parents had an acre plot miles from the city. For several years our Sunday routine was dinner there, and softball with the cousins, and taking turns turning that crank. We worked youngest on up so as it thickened it stayed a fair fight. I can trace my love of Hersey’s syrup to then.

I thought we’d ‘moved uptown’ when my folks got an electric ice cream maker. I remember turning the crank on the old one when I was a kid.

I have a modern equivalent…the tub stores in the freezer, makes a pint at a time in about fifteen minutes. I make it with low carb yogurt.

It doesn’t taste the same, at least in part, because the ingredients have changed. Heavy cream (where a lot of the flavor comes from) is now ultra pasteurized. The blueberries, peaches, and strawberries have all had the flavor bred out of them to make them last for long truck rides, or to increase their size. Do you remember those tiny wild strawberries and how sweet they were? The giants you buy at the store look amazing, but they have very little flavor. They disappoint me every time.

I remember that as a kid, cranking by hand gave me a sense of participation. Can’t get that with an electric motor.

And I still prefer the hand crank. Not only do I enjoy the exercise, but I can feel the progress and feel when it’s ready, not relying on some predetermined rule to say when it’s “ready”.

Like many here, I have memories of making ice cream at home. There were four of us boys to turn that crank and we had to take turns. I remember dad would come in for the last shift. I think it was because he was testing it to see if it was done. We were so happy when dad got an electric ice cream machine.

I bought an electric White Mountain ice cream maker for my wife after we retired. We were two months without health insurance before Medicare kicked in. Yes, I could have paid for Cobra coverage but I had two months to declare it. Because she didn’t get sick or hurt I didn’t have to pay for the insurance. Saved me over $1,000. Buying the freezer was my gift to her. It makes the creamiest ice cream.

All depends on who is making it. One Ice Cream store near Traverse City Michigan(it has been 18 years so no idea if they are still open) called Moomers made all of their own ice cream. Best I ever tasted.

The kung flu ruins taste buds

I have a Cuisinart ice cream maker. It is like soft serve and easy to use. No salt or ice. You freeze a canister and fill with recipe and turn it on for 30 minutes to churn. Don’t use full capacity or it overflows and only make what you will eat as it crystallizes in freezer.

Blue Bell Homemade Vanilla is fantastic, tastes like homemade but better.

I have a small one and I make ice cream with fruit and berries from our garden, and odd flavors, like pineapple.

We use my Mom’s recipe and it tastes just as great as ever.

You scream …

In the1980’s, I was the designated American Friend to International Students at a small Midwestern university, helping them in whatever way they needed to learn their way around campus and town, tutor them in English, critique their papers, and, especially, acclimating to our culture. We posted invitations for a homemade ice cream party. There were maybe a dozen who showed up (as word spread, as many as 30 attended our future parties. I had set the ingredients and utensils out in the kitchen and hubby, with help from the young men, was in charge of the electric freezer. Each girl put one of the ingredients in a mixing bowl and I used a hand mixer to blend them. One young Taiwanese woman exclaimed wistfully, “That is so convenient! We don’t have this in my country!” I was quite confused since it had been made in Taiwan, but she explained, “Many things are made in my country, but they are not made for my people.” And the unanimous response to their first taste of homemade ice cream was, “Yummy in the tummy!”

Um… What’s the joke?

You can’t go home again.

Tastes better when you were a kid and didn’t have to do the work!

i make ice cream all the time and enjoy it because I made it.

Just make sure that you don’t get any of the salt into the pot.

Unless you happen to LIKE salty ice cream.

I buy Tillamook.

We have a rarely used electric ice cream maker, and one of our family legends comes from when my wife made chocolate ice cream in it. We didn’t have the right kind of chocolate handy so she substituted baking chocolate. When the maker was done the ice cream had the right color but instead of being a bit soupy it was a thick paste. We all tried it – it was not as tasty as chocolate ice cream should be but it had a kick. One spoonful made our scalps itch and our ears ring. Not good, but unforgettable.

The reason that it doesn’t taste like you remember it is obvious once you look at the set of ingredients in a container of store-bought ice cream. Also, folks, be careful when using eggs in your ice cream.

I feel the same way. Just not the same as cranking it all afternoon long, everyone taking shifts

Off topic note: Support your local cartoonist. Become a premium member. It costs only $20 a year (5.5 cents a day).

Arlo, maybe all the effort you had to put into the old hand crank models somehow enhanced the flavor.

Electric? My dad has and we use annually the hand-cranked one. A tease to all kids (for their first time cranking) is to tell them to turn it steady at a certain speed and that if they don’t, the ice cream will come out lumpy. We used to do ours with peaches, blueberries, chocolate, or huckleberries. Or just plain vanilla.

Pretty sure, back when I was young, the eggs, cream, and milk were fresher and I’d helped pick the fruit that week.

Just sayin’

My father was a pastor for many years and he loved to have church fellowships, often by centering them around eating. One such fellowship was an ice cream supper, which included homemade ice cream of all types and all that goes with it, pies, cookies, cake, and so on.

Such good memories from those times.

Thanks for the reminder, JJ!

Don’t we all have memories of food when we where kids that will never be matched? Mine is a Philly Hoagie made at the butcher shop a few blocks from my Grandma’s.

It doesn’t taste the same because you yourself aren’t the same, Arlo.

We inherited a hand-crank freezer from my in-laws, replaced with an electric one. For about 35 years we always hand-cranked. At social events, I would grind away. People would ask if they could help. After about a half-hour when it started to get hard, I would finally relent and let others take over. Never had to do the hardest work.

Now we have a little electric ring-freezer. No salt.

And Jimmy, its the ingredients you choose that make it taste as great as ever.

needs to be hand-churned

For an extended family get-together one summer, my sister and I spent two weeks making different types of ice cream – it was like having our own Rite-Aid. My favorite was maple pecan to which I added a dollop of bourbon! Adults only.

The hand cranking makes the difference. That’s what grandkids are for.

I expect that using the high fat creamy milk right off the farm would make a big difference in flavour.

When my family traveled to Aruba two years ago, a place served my son a kid-friendly banana daiquiri that I asked to try. Upon the first sip it was like a Hollywood movie where someone ingests a drug, their eyes go wide and they are transported to a different place and time. For me, I was thrown back to some babyfood? pudding? etc. that I had when I was very young. Wow, what a flavorful nostalgia trip that was!

Kids see better, hear better and foods taste better (some worse) than adults.

I still make my great grandmother’s recipe, and it still tastes great. And I make her chocolate syrup too!

My first ice cream freezer sprung a leak and we got Chocolate Petroleum Ripple.

If you want that taste of homemade ice cream, but don’t want to bother making it, try Blue Bell Homemade Vanilla. It does taste just like home made. Also, their Dutch Chocolate tastes just like fudge sickles we used to get when I was a kid, so ,many eons ago.

That’s just because Uncle Ernie didn’t spit in it when nobody was looking.

It’s missing all those extra preservatives and guar gum….

Hand-cranked always tasted better than electric…always!!! That said…who’s got the time these days?? :-)