Interlude: Death and Ice Cream

It’s been a little over a month since my last post. A little over a month since my grandma’s 98th birthday.  I’ve had a few little things to blog about here and there, but what really needs writing won’t come.

Grandma passed away almost a week after her 98th birthday. We all thought she’d live to be a hundred. But accidents happen and sometime they change everything.

After the doctors decided there was little they could do, she was discharged to my parents’ home to live out her last days. Thankfully all of her children were able to fly in to be with her, and for the last week of her life she was surrounded by her children and grandchildren. Few people are that lucky.

Since I returned from the funeral, I’ve been taking care of my grandpa and filling my mind and my spare time with a hodgepodge of hobbies: gardening and raising seedlings, trying to learn a song on an accordion, writing and mailing lots of letters. And when Woot offered up a $100 ice cream maker for $30, I took up ice cream making.

Prior to this, my one memory of making ice cream is me squatting in the breezeway of my grandma’s house, surrounded by the flow of extended family, squared off with an ice cream maker, staring in wonderment at the spin and the salts.

With Grandma gone, it’s important to keep those memories alive.

But I wish she were here to taste these homemade creations. I know she’d enjoy them.

So far my favorite is mint chocolate chip (Ingredients: heavy cream, whole milk, sugar, chopped dark chocolate, peppermint extract and green food coloring):

The runner up was last night’s creation. No name for it yet, but it’s a mix of cream, milk, soy milk , vanilla yogurt, lemon extract, honey and ginger:

Not nearly as creamy as the mint chocolate chip, but powerfully tasty and refreshing.

The other flavors tried turned out wonderfully, too: homemade vanilla, fresh strawberry, and sweet cinnamon (which tasted almost exactly like a bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch and milk, without the crunch).

But honestly, I bought the ice cream maker with I one flavor in mind: Thai red curry.

Curries are made with coconut milk and many of them are slightly sweetened, so why not make one into an ice cream? But googling the idea brought up this website: 101 Frightening Ice Cream Flavors From Around the World.

Undeterred by curry ice cream’s association with the likes of raw horseflesh ice cream, pit viper ice cream and deep sea water ice cream, I made my simple batch with three components: coconut milk, sugar and red curry paste.

It came out a pretty, pastel orangish/red hue, and surprisingly, tasted just like red curry (minus the chunks of meat and veggies). But the chill is unsettling. Curry is served hot and spicy, and this tongue-toasting, brain-freezing treat messes with the mind. All I wanted to do was nuke it and slurp the resulting soup along with a mound of rice.

I haven’t made any curry ice cream since, but now the challenge is to find something to balance this gustatory experience. Curry ice cream can’t stand alone, but it’s still disturbingly delicious. Maybe if I add some shrimp, some spring onions…bamboo shoots…red and green bell peppers…