Better than chocolate

When I was growing up, summertime gatherings at my grandparent's house always meant homemade ice cream. It was almost always vanilla, but occasionally chocolate chip, with Hershey's chocolate syrup and fresh seasonal fruit to top it. We made it in a Blue Mountain brand hand-crank freezer similar to this. The rule was if you didn't help crank it, you didn't get any ice cream. So the kids would go first, of course, and it would end with an adult sitting on top of it to keep it balanced, while one of my uncles cranked the crap out of it, trying to make the other person fall off.

Because of these great memories, I eschewed electric ice cream freezers for a long time. The old-fashioned method was surely the best, alternating ice and rock salt to get the right temperature, the pleasure of working a little to get a treat, the...uh...hmm...right.

Screw old-fashioned (not the cocktail, of course. Those are quite delicious.) I don't want to have to mess with the mess. I mentioned to my best friend before my wedding that I thought an ice cream maker would be nice. And that's what she and her husband gave us.
We don't use it often enough, and I don't have much of a repertoire. I don't like to make recipes that call for eggs (it's not a contamination issue, I just don't like eggs.) and I don't go in for super-fancy complex things. Or chocolate, really. The one I make with some regularity is lemon-buttermilk ice cream. It's delicious and low fat and perfect for putting garden fresh strawberries and raspberries on top.