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{Heart Touchers}   Dad's Favorite Recipe*  10/5/01

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We end up a week of wonderful stories with one
by talented writer LeAnn R. Ralph.  Be sure to write to
her and give her a warm Heart Touchers welcome!

We have other farming stories still in our files, and we
have saved them to use in the near future...

Have a great weekend!  next e-mail heading your way on
Sunday night!
Michael

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Dad's Favorite Recipe

By: LeAnn R. Ralph
 

One summer day when I was a kid growing
up on our west central Wisconsin dairy farm,
my father made a trip to town to get some
items he needed for baling hay.

When he returned, in addition to twine string,
hydraulic fluid and grease, he had acquired a
rather funny-looking contraption. I'd never seen
anything like it before, and to me, it sort of
seemed like a cross between a meat grinder
and a pail.

"What's that?" I asked.

Dad grinned. "That's my new ice cream freezer."

A freezer? We had a big chest freezer in the
machine shed that was filled with packages
of vegetables from our garden. And there was
a little freezer on top of the refrigerator where
Mom put the extra loaves of bread she'd baked.
But how could something that looked like a cross
between a meat grinder and a pail have anything
to do with ice cream?

Dad must have noticed the puzzled look on my face.

"They call it a freezer because you make ice
cream with it," he said.

"How do you make ice cream?" I asked, frowning.

For a moment, Dad looked startled. Then his
face relaxed into an amused smile.

"No, I suppose you wouldn't know how to
do that, would you."

I shook my head.

"Tell you what. Tomorrow is Sunday, so we'll
just go ahead and make some, and then you
can see how it works."

"Are we REALLY going to make ice cream?" I asked.

Dad nodded. "The best you've ever tasted. It'll be
much better than what we can get at the store."

What did he mean, better than we could get
at the store? The ice cream we bought in
town came in all kinds of flavors, chocolate
and chocolate chip. Strawberry. Maple nut,
too. It couldn't get any better. Could it?

That evening before Dad turned on the bulk
tank prior to starting the milking, he skimmed
off a quart of cream. The stainless steel bulk
tank was a new addition to the milkhouse.
Before this, Dad had stored the milk in cans
that were put into a big concrete tank filled
with water to keep them cool.

"Take this to the house and put it in the
refrigerator," Dad said, handing the jar of
cream to me.

"Is this what we're going to make ice cream
out of?" I asked.

He nodded. "That and a few other things."

"What kinds of things?"

"Oh, sugar. And eggs. And vanilla. And
whatever else we can find."

"Like what?"

"We'll have to see what Ma's got in the cupboard."

After the milking was finished, Dad also
filled some plastic pails about half full of
water and put them in the big freezer in
the machine shed.

"What's that for?" I asked.

"We have to have lots of ice to put in the
bucket so when we're turning the handle,
which turns that part in the middle, the
cream will freeze. And that's how we'll get ice cream."

Dad always was pretty good at explaining things.

"How come you know so much about
making ice cream, anyway?" I asked.

"Grandma used to make it when I was a kid.
In the summer. Like for the Fourth of July."

Dad grinned. "We had to eat it all at once, too."

"Why?"

"No such thing as freezers back then. No way
to keep it. Not that any of us kids MINDED
eating it all at once. We didn't have ice cream
very often, though. Only when Grandma could
afford to buy cream."

My father and his brothers and sisters had lived
with their Grandmother Zinderman for a while in
the city of Waukesha in southern Wisconsin.
Dad's parents were cooks at a lumber camp
in northern Wisconsin.

The next afternoon, my father started assembling
the ingredients for making ice cream.

"Don't you need a recipe, Roy?" my mother
asked. "Didn't they include one with the freezer?"

Dad shook his head and tapped his temple
with one calloused forefinger. "Got the recipe
right here," he said. "It's Grandma's. Best one
I've ever used."

I stared at him in astonishment. I'd hadn't
thought about the fact that you'd actually
need a recipe to make ice cream. And I'd
certainly never considered that my father
might know a recipe for ice cream by heart.
Oh sure, all my life, I'd been watching Dad
plant crops. And fix machinery. And build calf
pens and hay racks and swings. But a RECIPE?

Dad opened the cupboard.

"Now what are you looking for?" Mom asked.

He shrugged. "Whatever I can find."

What he ended up finding was maraschino
cherries and walnuts.

When the batch of ice cream was finally
finished later that afternoon, Dad used a
spoon to clean off the paddles.

"Here, taste," he said, watching me closely
while I licked the spoon.

"Is it any good?" he asked.

To tell you the truth, my tongue could hardly
believe it. By comparison, the frozen stuff we
got from the store tasted as flat as, well, as
flat as plain ice cubes.

"Yummy!" I exclaimed. "Now I know why it's
called ice CREAM!"

Dad smiled and got another spoon so he
could taste the concoction, too.

"Yup," he said, "my favorite recipe still works."

Then he looked over at me and winked. "Like
they always say, 'You scream, I scream'.

I grinned back at him. "We ALL scream for ice cream."

That first batch was only one of many.
Sometimes Dad added crushed chocolate
chips. Sometimes he added fresh fruit, like
strawberries or blackberries or peaches.
Occasionally he repeated the maraschino
cherry and walnut combination.

But one thing was certain. No matter what
Dad added to his ice cream, each batch was
every bit as good as the last. And all because
of a recipe that he'd memorized when he was
little boy. No wonder I grew up thinking Dad
could do almost anything.

LeAnn R. Ralph
bigpines@ruralroute2.com

Write LeAnn and let her know what you thought of her story!

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LeAnn is a staff writer for two weekly newspapers
in west central Wisconsin, and is currently
working on a book of stories about growing
up on a family farm.

Be sure to check out her wonderful web site called
Rural Route 2 to read more of her stories!

http://www.ruralroute2.com

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Reader Feedback!

Dear Al:
What a poignantly beautiful story!  How I miss our little two bedroom house
where I faithfully washed every inch of baseboard every Saturday and shined
those beautiful hardwood floors!  How I miss the simplicity of it all.  Now,
28 years later, with education and career "advancement", I struggle to
maintain our four bedroom, three bath, 14 room house -- our "success" symbol!
Boy how I'd love to go back to rock pickin'!
Thank you -- for you truly DO understand!
Debbie B.
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Thought For The Day:

"The secrets of success are a good wife
and a steady job.  My wife Kristi told me."

Verse for the Day:

"He who finds a wife finds what is good and
receives favor from the Lord." --Proverbs 18:22

Kid's Thought For The Day:

"When you wave to people in the country,
they stop what they are doing and wave back."

Parent's Thought For The Day:

"A three year old child is a being who gets almost
as much fun out of a fifty-six dollar set of swings
as it does out of finding a small green worm." --Bill Vaughan

Coach's Thought For The Day:

"When someone tells me the is only one way
to do things, it always lights a fire under my
butt. My instant reaction is, “I'm gonna prove you wrong.”
-Picabo Street

Deep Thought For The Day:

"Probably the saddest thing you'll ever see is
a mosquito sucking on a mummy. Forget it little friend."

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REQUESTS:

Please pray for my 90 year old Grammie, who had a heart attack on Wed.
night.  Thank you for your prayers.
Angi
AMMahnke@webtv.net
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  _
/_/\/\    MICHAEL T. POWERS
\_\  /    HeartTouchers@aol.com  
/_/  \    "For I have been crucified with Christ and I no
\_\/\ \   longer live, but Christ lives in me.  The life I
   \_\/   live in the body I live for the Son of God, who  
           loved me and gave Himself for me."
           Galatians 2:20
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