Who Needs Fireworks?

Homemade ice cream. Yummmmmm. I will date myself when I say no longer is it a hand crank away but now an electrical outlet away. The memories of my dad out on the back porch steps cranking the paddle of our old blue bucketed ice maker makes me think of hot Kansas summers. We would travel to a farm to pick up real cream for Mom's recipe and that vanilla ice cream would taste divine.

Last week I ordered an ice cream maker. I had managed to burn up the motors on two before leaving Kansas last year and didn't think I would need one in NY. Wrong. Despite the fact I figured I might have to sleep with the thing on my side of the bed since I have little to no storage room I decided it would be worth it. This time of year, coming up on the Fourth of July, a person MUST have homemade ice cream.

What I didn't anticipate was how difficult it would be to find rock salt. I looked in three different grocery stores and some specialty stores. No luck. Even looking for it under the disguise of Ice Cream Salt brought me no luck. Not a problem, I thought. Why does it HAVE to be rock salt, I thought. Why can't it be table salt, or kosher salt, or sea salt of any of the other exotic salts they sell now days? The first batch using kitchen salt and refrigerator ice cubes turned out too liquid-y. (Hey! I swear I read somewhere on the internet that this would be okay.) The second batch using kosher salt and bagged ice turned out VERY liquid-y and not even mixed up very well. Was I really going to have to order rock salt over the web?

Turns out we just needed to head to the hardware store. The basement of the hardware store to be exact. They had stored it away for bad weather - all twenty five pounds of it. Seems in New York the only thing they use rock salt for is to melt ice off sidewalks. NOT melt ice in ice makers. So bless Mr. Y's heart, he lugged the rock salt and two bags of crushed ice home so we could see if we now had the winning combination.

Turns out we did.  Who needs fireworks for the Fourth of July when you can have homemade ice cream?