Becoming a bit more American and Making Ice Cream

Finally we are on the way to becoming a bit more American. Firstly, we enjoyed our first Memorial Day weekend in 90 degree plus heat stood on a friend's porch drinking beer and eating BBQ. It helped that the hosts were grilling aficionados and slow-cooked two massive lumps of brisket for something near 16 hours. I may or may not have suffered from something called the meat sweats. I definitely suffered from being bitten by bugs.

As you may guess from the picture above we have also gone a long way to fitting in here in the midwest by becoming owners of a 2003 Honda Civic, with an amount of miles one might laugh at back in the UK. 144,000 sounds a lot, but when people don't consider driving a few hundred miles for an afternoon out a big deal and still try and sell stuff with over 200k, hopefully it'll see us through our next two years here in Columbus.

In the last couple of weeks I have graduated from the labeling department into production at the Ice Cream kitchen. The handmade nature of the product even extends to taking a pint of ice cream in each hand and "tapping" them on an upturned cooking pot. Tapping is important as it gets any air bubbles out of the ice cream. One of the more unpleasant side effects of tapping is the danger of getting ice cream in your eye. You certainly get it in your face, depending on how quickly it is melting will determine just how much of your face and glasses are splattered.

Since tapping, lidding and boxing (the latter two probably not needing too much explanation), I have moved onto "machines". The machines make the ice cream and you (the operator) give it the ingredients to do so. Even though it is pretty hard physical work, the process is relatively straightforward. Basically, pour a bucket or two of ingredients in and tell the machine how long to churn away. What makes this task a good amount more challenging in certain flavors of ice cream is the presence of flecks of white chocolate that have a habit of clogging the machine. Also, making "White House Cherry" involves hand mixing "sugar syrup-plumped cherries" and "roasted whole pistachios". While mixing, though, you need to be sure that the ice cream isn't melting and that it is staying white and not turning purple as a result of the cherries. Fortunately this is a limited editor flavor and will be done with when the president is inaugurated in the fall.