Ice Cream!

(Well, not really, but good anyway) Now, this is important: this recipe is BEST made with a real hand-cranked ice cream freezer, cranked by available kids under the age of 13. (Why pick that age as the upper limit? See my post on "junior high". Ooops. Haven't posted on that yet. heh) Really. It just makes a better "ice cream" that way. :-) Keep in mind, you can adjust the amounts for bigger batches, if you want, but a half gallon or so is usually enough for a family of four. This is pretty much as we made it when I was a kid. (Didn't everybody make "Eagle Brand Ice Milk" in the 50s?) Vanilla "Ice Cream" Ingredients 2 (14 oz.) can Eagle Brand milk 1 qt. milk (or half n half) 1.5 Tbsp. vanilla extract Other stuff HAND CRANK ice cream freezer rock salt "lightly" crushed chunk ice KIDS Combine all ingredients, mixing well. Pour mixture into freezer can of a 1 gallon hand hand-crank freezer. Assemble the freezer and pour a layer of ice around the drum (about 2-3 inches worth). Sprinkle rock salt in a thin layer on top of the ice. Layer some more ice, then rock salt, then ice, etc. until just below the top of the ice cream cannister. Add ice only all the way to the top, if you want. Crank at a steady pace. Kids can sit on top of the ice cream freezer and crank it if ya put a layer of newspaper on top and then an old towel for them to sit on. Or team two: one "sitter" and one "cranker" so they can switch off. As brine begins coming outa the weep hole, layer in more ice (and maybe a tad salt) every now and then. When (if) the kids start to find the crank hard to turn (cos the stuff's freezing up on 'em) you can take over the cranking. All kindsa easy variations possible: add some peach, strawberry or blueberry preserves before freezing. (Blueberry preserves ought to be added when the stuff's about frozen, IMO--just toward the last.) Lotsa variations. I like to substitute some scraped vanilla beans for the vanilla extract. Nice. Heck. I wouldn't mind taking the rest of the bean and running it through a coffee grinder to milk more flavor, although it does change the flavor a bit. You can store the ice cream in the cannister in the ice/brine mix (packed with newspaper/old towel--see, ya knew those'd come in handy) for a few hours, if necessary, but eating it right away or making it just before a meal, storing it in the brine/ice mix for just during the meal is probably best. VW Bug asked in comments about where to get a hand crank ice cream maker. How about here? [coupla edits made, including comment about jr. hi... :-)