Beeeeep. The computerized woman on my Balding Brother’s answering machine had finished its speech about all the possible ways I could get in touch with my brother and was now giving me a turn to talk.

“Hey guys. It’s me,” I said, with characteristic informality. “We’re making ice cream right now and wondered if you would want to come over to help eat it. We are going to try to get the kids to bed early tonight and it is 6:30 now, so that means you can stay till about, oh, say 7:30. If you get this message, call me back; otherwise, too bad for you—you lose out.”

My sis-in-law called back five minutes later. “We were outside eating supper when you called. What time should we come?”

Since I was feeling a little bad (but only a little) about feeding my children just ice cream for supper, I threw the leftovers from the previous night’s supper into a glass serving bowl, heated them up in the microwave, and then carried the bowl out to the porch where my kids were excitedly greeting our guests and devouring the sweet cherries that my sis-in-law had brought along. I fork-fed my little birdies while trying (rather unsuccessfully) to carry on a conversation, and ended up eating much of the bowl’s contents myself. It was the brown butter noodles and peas, so I didn’t mind too much.

When Mr. Handsome finished with the cranking, I headed back inside to load up a tray with serving bowls and spoons, the bowl of freshly sliced and sugared strawberries, and the jar of granola.

We dug in, scooping the soft ice cream into our bowls, piling on the strawberries and then finishing off the whole glorious mound with a couple scoops of granola.

A storm was coming; the flies were thick. We had seconds, and I finished off the scrapings from the bottom of the canister.

“The rain is coming!” Miss Becca Boo yelled. “I can hear it!” Sure enough, the rain was coming from the north, sweeping down the valley towards our house.

As the wall of rain washed over our house, my brother grabbed the diaper bag and my sis-in-law grabbed the baby. “Just set our bowls out in the yard to wash them,” my brother said, and then they sprinted to their car, the rain pelting them every step of the way. It was 7:30 on the dot.

Old-Fashioned Vanilla Ice Cream

Summer evenings when I was growing up, my parents would call up some friends to come over for homemade ice cream. It was the real deal—mostly cream with some milk, raw eggs, sugar, and vanilla. We usually made plain vanilla ice cream, choosing to serve the toppings (usually fruit and granola) separately, but once in a while they cranked the crushed fruit into the ice cream. That was about as fancy as it got.

Nowadays, people make their ice cream fancy-schmancy, with add-ins of every type—real vanilla beans, saffron (I tried it and it made the ice cream look and taste vaguely like poop), cream cheese, chocolate, peanut butter (I have yet to tell you about this one)—and because everyone is concerned with salmonella, almost all the recipes instruct you to make a cooked custard for your base. I thoroughly enjoy the rich, store brand-type ice cream with its custard base, but those ice creams don’t have anything over this old-fashioned, soft serve-style ice cream.

This ice cream is best eaten fresh (once frozen it becomes rock hard and loses much of it’s charm), and because the recipe makes a fair amount, you’ll probably want to call some friends to come share in the feast. If you do end up with leftovers, freeze them in little one-cup containers—they will be delicious in smoothies.

1 quart cream
1 cup milk
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla

In a medium-sized mixing bowl, beat the eggs with an electric mixer for 2-4 minutes until thick and creamy. Add the sugar, vanilla, and milk and beat some more. Add the cream and mix to combine. (Conversely, you can mix all the ingredients together with a whisk and then pour the mixture through a fine-mesh sieve to remove any little bits of unblended egg yolk.) At this point you can refrigerate the mixture till you are ready to freeze it, or you can freeze it right away.

Freeze according to your ice cream maker’s instructions. Serve plain, or with fresh fruit.

Updated on May 5, 2011
Strawberry Ice Cream
Omit the milk, increase the sugar to 1 1/4 (or maybe even 1 ½ cups), and add 1-2 cups crushed strawberries.

More often than not, the simplest food is the best. Quite a bit of what I eat falls into the category of simple fare, but I often neglect to tell you about it because I figure that you already know about it, enjoy it, and, like me, take it for granted.

Take peas for example. We eat them a lot. I like to serve them alongside macaroni and cheese or Indian chicken. They’re an easy vegetable to prepare and one that the children like, or at least eat with minimal complaining. If I’m throwing together a quick meal, or one that involves a vegetable side dish that the kids don’t like, I usually pull a bag of peas out of the freezer compartment, dump them in the kettle, add some water and salt, and bring them to a boil. It’s faster and less time-consuming than making carrot sticks.

That is, unless you grow your own peas. Then they are time-consuming beyond reason. The work that goes into growing your own peas (planting, weeding, picking, and shelling) transforms them from an every-day fast food veggie into a gourmet food on par with fresh mozzarella, sourdough bread, and homemade grape juice.

Miss Becca Boo and I (and The Baby Nickel, but he didn’t really help that much) picked peas the other morning and then that afternoon all four of the kids and I spent a couple hours perched on kitchen stools, bowls of peas nestled in our laps and empty pods strewn across the table. It was a nice time (we chatted and played the [boring] game “I’m Going On A Trip and I’m Taking…”), but shelling the peas was still a chore, one that involved hunched shoulders and sore fingertips. The reward for our labors seemed hardly worth it—not even a whole half-gallon of peas. How in the world do families raise enough peas to eat for an entire year? You’d be shelling peas for a whole week!

Because I figured there was no point in freezing the peas since we could eat them up in the next couple days, I simply blanched them and put them in the refrigerator. The next day I fixed half of them for supper, and my, were they delicious. I loosely followed Julia Child’s recipe for buttered peas, and I made brown butter noodles with ham to go along with them. Mmm, butter.

The kids thought the peas strange, claiming they liked the store-bought peas better, but they ate them anyway. (I took their complaints with a grain of salt since the stomach bug is worming its way through our family and the kids have been turning up their noses at even their favorite foods.) They fussed at the noodles and the ham (normally favorite foods) but when told that they could have one cookie for one helping of food and two cookies for two helpings, Yo-Yo and Miss Becca Boo ate generous second servings.

As for me, I could hardly keep my hands out of the noodle pot, and I had seconds and thirds of everything—I didn’t even need a cookie afterwards (though I did eat a part of one).

While I served the peas and noodles separately (kids, you know), they can be tossed together in one big serving bowl right before serving. That’s how I ate the leftovers.

Buttered Peas
Roughly adapted from Julia Child’s book Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

I admit it seems rather scandalous to add sugar to the already-sweet new peas, but however unnecessary, it does make them good!

4 cups new peas
2 quarts water
2 tablespoons salt
2 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoons sugar
black pepper and salt, to taste

Put the water in a saucepan, add the salt, and bring the water to a boil. Add the peas and quickly bring the water back to a boil. Boil for 4-8 minutes, depending on how well-done you like your peas and whether or not they have already been blanched.

Drain the peas, return them to the kettle, and turn the burner back to medium heat. Gently cook the peas, watching them closely, till all the moisture has evaporated. Add the sugar and more salt and pepper, if needed. Add the butter, toss the peas to coat, and serve.

Brown Butter Noodles with Ham

1 pound medium-sized egg noodles
4 tablespoons butter
4 to 8 ounces deli ham
salt
black pepper
1/4 cup fresh parsley, chopped (optional)

Chop the ham into little strips, about the same width and length as the noodles.

Cook the noodles according to the package directions, taking care not to over-cook them. Drain them and return them to the kettle.

While the noodles are cooking, brown the butter. Put the butter in a small saucepan and melt it over medium heat. Once melted, give the pan a swirl every minute or so, watching closely to make sure the butter doesn’t burn. When there are lots of little brown specks in the bottom of the pan, remove the pan from the heat and pour it over the noodles.

Add the sliced ham and toss to mix. Taste to check the seasonings. Transfer the noodles and ham to a serving bowl, and garnish with the parsley, if you like.