The sun! I think I had forgotten what it felt like. The last few days have been a beautiful melange of above 30-degree bliss. The snow starts to melt and the short shorts and VibramFiveFingers shoes are whipped out, creating a flurry of excited and very pale individuals. Davis Square becomes littered with people in the afternoons, centered around a quirky girl with a ZooeyDeschanel haircut playing Alt-J songs on the ukulele. Words like "spring," "rejuvenation," "frolic," "rebirth" and "ice cream" come to mind.
The minute the weather starts to change I feel the need to make ice cream, a common spring and summer activity in my family. One of my dad's claims to fame is picking up an expensive SimacilGelataio 800 (some people know car models, but I'm not one of them) model ice cream machine at the thrift store for just a few bucks. The thrift stores in my town are home to many hidden treasures. Whether you find a sacrificial Aztec knife or an Italian ice cream machine, it's usually a good day at the thrift store.
The Italian beauty quickly became a new member of our family to make the scorching Ojai summers of endless 100-degree days more bearable. This is when we began to test the bounds of what could be made into ice cream or sorbet. We tried peaches from our tree, fresh mint, watermelon, strawberries and, of course, margaritas - a couple scoops of margarita sorbet and the heat doesn't seem so bad after all. The meditative hum of the "little ice cream machine that could" is the sound of summer, the little plastic blades gyrating as the liquid becomes cool, creating small ice crystals - the key to making it so smooth.
During the summer, the machine makes the rounds between different family friends' houses and is used as the centerpiece of dinner parties. It's "the sisterhood of the traveling ice cream machine." It's like "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants" (2005), but there's much less teen angst when you don't have to worry about all fitting into the same pair of pants. The ice cream machine is always a good talking piece, and it brings people together. It takes a village to make a good batch of ice cream. And that's when the creativity comes in. You don't need to go to a hipster ice cream shop in Berkeley to get exciting strawberry balsamic or orange rosemary ice cream. Look around and take a risk. Maybe it will be gross, but you could also have invented the new salted caramel - a fad that doesn't seem to be going anywhere.
Summer is the perfect season for this practice because there is time to hone your craft and take pride in it. It's the perfect time to refuse to revert to the convenient option, but instead choose one that will bring you closer to your food and the people you are sharing it with. It's like a mini slow food movement in your own backyard, raising a spoon to the cornerstones of caring, cultivating and connecting. Ultimately, as Alice Waters, president of Slow Food International, says on their website, "our everyday meals can anchor us to nature and the place where we live."
I'm probably totally jumping the gun and today is going to be the next Blizzard of '78, but a girl can dream. After this long winter, summer just seems like the echo of a Jack Johnson song. I guess we just have to take it one day at a time, and with each rising degree know that we are closer to a bowl (or cone) of bliss.
Eva Batalla-Mann is a sophomore majoring in peace and justice studies and community health. She can be reached at Eva.Batalla_Mann@tufts.edu.
