Snow-Made Ice Cream

If life gives you lemons, make lemonade.  If life gives you day after day of snow, make ice cream.  The basic recipe is embarrassingly simple, but it makes good ice cream.

Ingredients

• 1 cup milk
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/2 cup sugar
• Snow (dry, powdery snow is best)

To make it richer, I used 1/2 cup of milk and 1/2 cup of half and half (which I suppose makes one cup of three quarters and one quarter, but that's not important).

In a large bowl, mix the milk, vanilla and sugar and stir until the sugar is dissolved.  Carry the bowl and some sort of snow-scooping device (I used a 1 cup measuring cup) outside and find the cleanest snow you can (I scooped the top three inches of snow piled up on my deck railing).  Scoop snow into your mixture, stirring constantly.  Add snow until you get the thickness you want.  It should take about four or five cups. 

Ice Cream! (I know it looks more like mashed potatoes or tapioca in this pic, but it's ice cream)

Enjoy.  Try not to hurt yourself by eating the whole thing like I did.  I'm going to have to take up cross-country skiing.

This is just the beginning.  Imagine all the stuff you can add: berries, caramel, crumbled Reese's Cups.  You can take a hammer to a bag of Oreos and make cookies and cream.  And if you want to cut out the fat from all the dairy, there are plenty of good sorbet recipes on the internet.  That's what I'm making next, blueberry sorbet.