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.
