Stay Home: Vanilla Ice Cream + Salted Caramel Sauce

Stay at home orders, shelter in place, quarantine, self-isolation, social distancing, physical distancing, flatten the curve. Whatever you wanna call it, I’m at home for the time being and I hope you are, too. If you are an essential worker I am so grateful to you for your sacrifices. I know the folks who deliver packages, collect garbage, work at grocery stores, carry mail, etc. are helping me and my quality of life right now - not to mention the people in healthcare who are on the front lines of all this.

Holy psychedelic lighting! I didn’t figure out during my first batch that I could turn off the LED’s on my aerogarden.

I made Alton Brown’s vanilla ice cream. This was not my first time with it, nor was it my last. My first batch I took in to school to churn with my students to celebrate my student teacher graduating from our class. I’ve never had my whole class’ unbroken attention the way I did churning ice cream!

The first week of self-distancing was my spring break, so I was stuck at home without much to do. Canceled trips, canceled plans. However, this was before stay at home orders went in place, so I made a couple of visits while maintaining social distance buffers between people.

Yes, I am the proud owner of two ice cream freezers. Ha! Alton’s recipe, while delicious, is a little too much for one small churn. It’s also a lot of work but oh man it is sooooo good. I made this twice, and shared it with my parents and a couple of friends (again, from safe distances). I still have some in my freezer, and it was just perfect with my mom’s blueberry pie!

Also delicious (and also shared with my people): home-made caramel sauce. I don’t remember where I got the recipe, but y’all, it’s sugar, butter, and cream. Nothing bad about that! Hot tip: also great in tea and coffee.

Making ice cream takes a lot of time and attention! Do you have something high-effort that you’ve tackled during this extended time, that isn’t part of your day to day life?