My greatest vice is ice cream - Haagen Dazs coffee, Ben & Jerry’s Americone Dream, and anything with mint and chocolate. While hiking through Vermont with my spouse, we stopped at a farm just off of the Appalachian Trail that made and sold rich and creamy maple ice cream and cinnamon ice cream. My mouth still waters every time I recall that experience. Since I am not aware of any locally made ice cream, I decided to make my own this week.
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| Everyone in the family gets in on the action! |
As background, last summer I read Michael Pollan’s Food Rules, which has been a source of inspiration for bringing my eating habits into better harmony with my values. The act of making my own ice cream follows Pollan’s rule #39 “Eat all the junk food you want as long as you cook it yourself” (Pollan, 2009). According to Pollan, preparing your own junk food causes you to eat much less of it. I would add that I cannot get more local than my own kitchen, I effectively eliminated additives and preservatives, I enjoyed the activity with my wife, and I appreciated and savored the treat even more than usual.
We own, but had never used, the human-powered Play & Freeze Ice Cream Maker. (http://icecreamrevolution.com/) Ours is a large red jewel-colored, hard plastic ball with an aluminum cup inside that makes one pint of ice cream. To begin, one side is filled with ice and 1/2 cup of rock salt. In the other side, ice cream ingredients are added. We used half and half, sugar, vanilla, and crushed Thin Mint Girl Scout cookies. (With three little girl scouts in our cul-de-sac, we could not refuse.) After securing the lid, we rolled the ball back and forth across the floor for ten minutes. While this was not aerobic exercise, we definitely felt ourselves working a little to move the seven pound ball. After ten minutes, we stirred the ice cream, drained the water, added more ice, and added another 1/4 cup of rock salt. Then we rolled the ball for another ten minutes. When we finished the ice cream was solid around the edges and softer in the center, so we put the ball in the freezer to enjoy after dinner. The verdict: Tasty!
Pollan is correct that when you make junk food yourself, you eat less of it. Making the ice cream will be a fun but occasional activity in our house. Nevertheless, the ingredients we used have a footprint. While the ice came straight from our freezer, the rock salt package does not list the source. Our vanilla and organic half and half both came from Wisconsin, the cookies were made in Kentucky, and we purchased the sugar at the bulk store in Charlotte (again, I am not sure of the original source). But the footprint does not end there. For example, what was the source of the cookie ingredients? I’m guessing they did not come from Kentucky. And how about the packaging waste? In Charlotte, we can recycle the creamer carton and cap, the cookie box, the rock salt bag, and the vanilla bottle. The bulk sugar bag will be reused. We will throw away the plastic sleeves that the cookies came in and the vanilla extract bottle cap. What is the impact of pouring rock salt water down the drain? How can our ice cream be more sustainably made? And, when items are not available in the area, how local is local?
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References
Pollan, M. (2009). Food rules: An eater’s manual. New York, NY: Penguin Group.
I love making Girl Scout cookie ice cream! Ben and Jerry's has a great ice cream making book with all the back to the basics in it!
ReplyDeleteThat sounds like a lot of fun, with the end reward of great ice cream! My husband loves home made ice cream (which he makes a couple times a year). Since we don't have the ball, its not as much fun! I never thought of adding the girl scout cookies, what a great idea!
ReplyDeleteI used one of those balls with ETL students a few years back during our summer field experience. We went down the road to the local dairy farm and bought raw milk with the cream floating on top. Then we went blueberry picking - we proceeded to make an amazing amount of blueberry ice cream that was a huge hit. We laughed and laughed as 10 of us sat on the floor rolling the ball while the other six stood and took videos of us doing it. I laughed when I read your essay just remembering that experience.
ReplyDeleteMaking ice cream is a great thing to do and it is true - you will eat less of it. A good thing really. Thanks for the reminder from Michael Pollan's book - it is a good rule. Now if each of us can really live by it. I appreciated the reminder.
PS - I don't think Girl Scout cookies fare so well in the carbon footprint/food miles category. Hmmm too bad.
I have a couple comments about your ice cream making experience. First it brings back memories of "ice cream socials" in my church group when I was young. We would sit on ice cream machines as another person would spend time hand-grinding the ice cream until they would get tired and we would switch positions. Another person would keep throwing ice and rock salt into the bucket as the churning continued. We would make enough ice cream that we could sell it in a few days to fund various activities we would be doing in the year such as camp.
ReplyDeleteMy other comment is not as good. In addition to the carbon footprint of the Girl Scout Cookies, it came to my attention recently that the U.S. Girl Scout cookies are made with palm oil which is damaging to many environmentally sensitive areas of the world. See the following - http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2004351728_cookies16.html
The Girl Guides of the U.K. have stopped using the palm oil in their cookies, but there has not been a change in this regard in the U.S. yet. I know cute little Girls Scouts are hard to resist (I know of course having been one myself!) but everyone should think twice before buying the cookies until the ingredients change!
Thanks everyone for sharing your memories (and book suggestion) about ice cream making! I have to say that I know Girl Scout cookies are an irresponsible choice, and we ordered ours before the class embarked on this project. I have such a difficult time refusing, because I was a Scout for years and had to go door-to-door in my neighborhood. As a shy kid, I remember how hard that was. When we decided to flavor our ice cream, I wanted to use what we had on hand already. However, next year I think I will just offer a donation to the troop instead. This will be better for my waistline and conscience.
ReplyDeleteContinuing our discussion about Girl Scout cookies, it looks like a couple of 15-year-old Scouts are causing Kellogg, the manufacturer, to make some changes. Though not finished yet, these girls have made impressive strides tackling the mammoth manufacturer. Read about it here:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.grist.org/article/2011-03-14-how-two-15-year-old-girls-and-grist-readers-are-changing