Mrs. Bailey and I live out in the woods. Way far out in the woods. When we go to town it's about a four-mile drive before we hit pavement and our nearest 'full service' small city is a bit over 20 miles beyond that. That first bit of the drive down the dirt road is the prime-determining factor in just how long a trip to town will take though. If the road is in good shape, perhaps half the time each year, it doesn't take too long. When it's bad though it certainly slows us down, and there have been a very few times through the years when it was impassable by car and we were walking out.

Why live in such a place? Well, it is beautiful. Amazingly beautiful. Very comfortable too now that our home has been completely remodeled and updated. One also can't beat the privacy such a location offers. Like most people we do have a bad neighbor, but alas, only one of them, not half a city full of them!

All of this is a long way of saying that we can't easily buy ice cream. The stuff just can't make it from the nearest Safeway to our house. We can buy it from the combination general store/post office down the road just a few miles but even that melts a good bit before getting home and one has to be willing to live with whatever extremely minimal selection is available at any given time.

We've solved the problem recently by starting to make our own. Some friends visited us within the last few months and brought with them their ice cream freezer indulging us all with an amazing treat. The stuff wasn't just edible; it was better than any ice cream I've ever eaten. I've had homemade ice cream in the past that just wasn't very good, but this stuff was superb. I've since learned that the trick was the machine it is made in, an old fashioned outside use machine is what's needed, not some little underpowered thing that sits on a countertop.

This resulted in our purchase of a White Mountain Ice Cream Freezer made by Rival. It's a big wooden bucket with stainless steel and cast iron mixing parts all topped by a massive and powerful electric motor.

The thing makes ice cream that puts Ben and Jerry's to shame every time.

It does require a great deal of ice to accomplish its feat, but we have three refrigerators here, so making enough ice is not a problem.

Here's our basic recipe:

2 Eggs
1 ¼ Cup Sugar
5 Cups Half and Half
¼ Tablespoons Vanilla
Dash of Salt

Mix the ingredients together well and poor straight in to the ice cream freezer. Fill the freezer with ice and rock salt according to the machines instructions. 25 minutes later you turn off the motor and a truly delectable ice cream is your reward. At this point it is a soft ice cream, if you prefer hard just leave it in the machine with the motor off for an hour or so.

One batch will easily feed 6 people.

For flavored ice cream other than vanilla, simply change the basic recipe as inspired.