Dead to Me

The ice cream maker is dead to me.

Yes, I, Valerie Norris, gave up on an appliance that takes something simple—ice cream—and turns it into an Olympic marathon event, with pre-freezing, measuring, mixing in a mixer, mixing/freezing in the ice cream freezer, then adding flavors and freezing it to actual ice cream consistency.

I know, it’s not like me to quit when it comes to preparing food. I’m the same person friends tell, “I love your cooking but your recipes are too much work.” The same person who starts the Thanksgiving gravy the day before by oven-roasting turkey thighs, then simmering them on the stovetop, then straining the liquid, etc. It’s a recipe so involved it has a legacy of burns and knife cuts that don’t heal for months. Why do I keep making it? The gravy is amazing. You could eat it like soup.

So why did I give up on the ice cream maker? Because I keep producing ice cream the consistency of a home-cranked snow cone. Crunch crunch. The ice cream was better when the machine was new, but over the years it lost what was apparently the magic high speed that produced creamy ice cream.

Oh, I tried. I spent a long weekend giving the ice cream maker a second chance, a third and a fourth. I pre-froze buckets deep in the recesses of two different freezers. I tweaked the recipe. I let the ice cream machine run an extra ten minutes.

It still resulted in ice cream the consistency of melted, re-frozen, freezer-burned iced milk that crunched in my mouth.

But I haven’t completely given up. My daughter has an ice cream attachment for her Kitchen Aid mixer, and I’m going to borrow it and try again. Again with the freezing, mixing, mixing/freezing, adding flavors and then final freezing. Because this time it might be great.

If not, I’ll really give up. Really. Trust me.