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Fun Fact #1: July is National Ice Cream Month.

Fun Fact #2: Indiana is the #2 producer of regular and low fat ice creams in the Nation.

Fun Fact #3: I love making (… and eating) ice cream.

Adam and I received an ice cream maker for our wedding from my cousin. It wasn’t on the registry and it was one of those small appliances I wondered if I would ever use. My mom made ice cream from time to time growing up but, I had never given it a try. I was entertaining taking it back, but something told me just to open the box and take a look at it.

Thank goodness I did.

I now joke that ice cream brought me to life.

… But, there is a little truth to this.

The summer after Adam and I got married there were changes with my role across the nation and because I was not in the position to move, I had to walk away from the company. And work all together.

Jobs in my field and skill-set were nonexistent within an hour drive from our country home, so I was, >gulp< unemployed.

A word I never thought I would be. I graduated on Deans List. I had worked one job, if not two, since I was fifteen. Every day was hard.

You may be thinking, “Are you kidding? No work? Sounds wonderful.”

And it was for… oh, about five days.

I could only apply for jobs so much without going crazy. I had no schedule. No need to get out of gym shorts. No need to turn off The Kardashian’s, even though I had already seen the episode four times. All of my friends were at least an hour away and, weird, at work. Like I should have been. I was pretty pathetic. I even remember one –bad– day wondering if I would ever work again.

Then you realize you have spent a whole day and have not said one word aloud. Then you snap.

And then, I opened the ice cream maker.

It wasn’t the kind with ice and a hand crank that I remembered from childhood. It was sleek and ran electronically. And there were recipes in the manual. A recipe for Peanut Butter Cup Ice Cream; Adam’s all-time favorite. I had to make it. (Side note: Who was the genius who put chocolate and peanut butter together? I mean, seriously. Genius.)

I beamed to my mom on the phone about how easy and fun it was to make and how great it turned out. She must have beamed to her girlfriends about how wonderfully domesticated I was becoming (God knows she wasn’t talking about how great I was at my job…) because a couple weeks later I received a late wedding gift from one of her friends who lived in the neighborhood. It was the, then very brand new, Jeni’s Splendid Ice Cream at Home Cookbook and a check with “For lots and lots of heavy cream!” in the memo.

Jeni’s Ice Cream originated in my hometown of Columbus. She is now very well known for her unique flavors and fresh ingredients, but when she was just starting out years ago she had one shop (She now has multiple and is expanding like crazy out of Ohio) near my uncle’s house.

He was a bachelor until he married a wonderful woman from England in 2008 and he would often take my little sister and me on “dates.” They were to neat places and are all so memorable. One time we wanted to try sushi, so he took us to his favorite sushi restaurant and ordered a BOAT of sushi for the three of us just so we could try a lot of different rolls. There were also dates to a trendy stone oven pizza place and even fancy steak houses. But one thing was always the same: the night ended with ice cream at Jeni’s.

Jeni’s is a far cry from the typical vanilla. She uses crazy spices like lavender and cayenne. Sounds nuts, I know. But, it’s wonderful! As far as I know, Jeni’s was the first to create the flavor “Salty Carmel.” It was at Jeni’s that I learned I loved bourbon, even though I was well below the drinking age, with her bourbon butter pecan. The warmness of the bourbon mixed with the creamy ice cream and salty nuts. Divine.

The cookbook is beautiful. Playful, rustic photos adorn the colorful pages. The recipes vary in difficulty. I will be honest; the ice creams can be difficult for novice cooks. I made the Salty Carmel ice cream when I got the book and was challenged. I felt like I had fifty things going on. My kitchen was MESS when it was all said and done. But, it was good, so I will still consider it a win.

The sorbets are much simpler. I made her Watermelon and Lemonade Sorbet last summer and the hardest thing about it was cutting the watermelon.

A few days ago, Jeni’s Twitter account began posting about the “Backyard Mint” flavor. Different tweets mentions how it “Has returned!” and that the ice cream in her stores is made with “fresh-picked organic peppermint from Jorgenson Farms.” (Jorgenson Farm’s is just outside Columbus.)

This got me thinking. I have fresh, organic peppermint in my backyard. And I was yet to use my ice cream maker this summer. Perhaps I should give it a try?

Sure enough, it was in the cookbook so I made plans to get it going after work yesterday.

I will list my take away’s from this creation, but I am not going to list the recipe because:

1. I feel like I am friends with Jeni after eating at her store for nearly a decade and before she made it big. It feels wrong to do it without her permission.
2. I am new to the blogging world and I am not real-life friends with Jeni. I am not sure what copyright laws are out there.
And, 3. You should probably just go buy the book. You won’t regret it.

The process of making the ice cream was pretty easy. I loved tearing into my fresh mint leaves before adding them to the sugar cream mixture. They smelled so strong and vibrant.

The mint needed to steep in the finished cream for at least four hours. I kept mine in the fridge for about six.

Before bed last night, I strained the mint leaves out, put the flavorful cream into the frozen ice cream bowl and let the machine spin for about fifteen minutes. Then the mixture looked like ice cream and was pulling from the sides of the bowl.

I slopped the finished product into a container and let it freeze until after dinner tonight.

As Adam and I split the bowl, we both commented on how rich and creamy it was. We loved the light, freshness of the mint.

I asked him what he thought a good mix in might be for next time. To get ideas going, I said, “Peppermint Patties.” Adam chimed in with “Oreos.” Then, after taking a bite and thinking for a while, it came to me. “Thin Mints.”

Adams face lit up.

Nailed it.

Written on May 30, 2013.

The following are a few things I had never heard of until I moved to Indiana for college. (Mind you, I lived in OHIO. Not exactly an exotic, foreign land…)

– Home-style meals like Chicken and Noodles, Fried Tenderloin and biscuits and gravy. This may have been more because of my health conscious mother. But, my friends weren’t eating these things either. Either way, I still had no clue these stick to your ribs, country favorite’s existed.

– The Colts. Not even kidding. Every Sunday, everyone in my dorm wrote “COLTS” on their dry erase boards on their room doors. I remember wondering if it was a weird acronym for club or something. I had to ask my RA. Again, I came from Ohio. Central Ohio. College Football was all that mattered.

– A Hoosier. Still not really sure what that one is. Clearly, I went to the school in northern Indiana. Not the one in the sourthern part of the state. Perhaps you know of that school…?!

– U-Turns. These I had heard of, but never had done one. My freshman year roommate, an Indiana native, did one the first time I was in the car with her. As we were whipping around I was frantically looking for cops and thinking she was the most reckless driver ever. But, they are legal here. And so convenient.

– Morels and mushroom hunting. Mushroom hunting for one, just sounds ridiculous. But it’s a thing. A super competitive, intense thing. Morels are a wild growing mushroom that are actually considered a delicacy.

Between the notoriety morels and mushroom hunting receives each spring throughout the state (radio stations actually have contests to see who can find the largest mushroom) to Barbara Kingsolver’s, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle account of this spring vegetable, I knew I had to try them.

Morels grow naturally in the woods very well throughout Indiana in the spring. (Morels actually grow in most regions of the country, outside the deserts and very warm areas in the south. The Great Lake region of the Midwest is known to be a highly popular area of morel growth from April to mid-June.)

Adam has friends who enjoy mushroom hunting. He even would show me pictures that came across his Facebook Newsfeed when people posted the finds from their hunt. I really wanted to try them.

But, spring was crazy. There were weddings, a lot going on at work, both my siblings had college and high school graduations and we were putting our own garden together, so mushroom hunting never happened.

Not that I was that disappointed. Woods and me? We don’t mix that well. Plus, there was a sign outside an Amish farm stand not too far from work said that they had morels. I figured I would just swing by there.

That was until a peer mentioned how she spent $48 on a pound of morels there.

Fifty bucks? Seriously? I was going to HAVE to find time to hunt next year.

A few days later I was driving on the west side of Indianapolis and passed a farm stand with a sign saying that they have had morels for $18 a half pound. A deal in comparison to the morels closer to home, so I stopped.

I went back to the fridge full of little cartons full of cap shaped mushrooms of all sizes. The looked like coral or honeycomb. I wasn’t really sure what I was looking for, but I figured I should make sure they were free of any mold of decay just like any other produce.

I checked out and got back in my car. As I drove away I glanced down at the little clear carton and kicked myself for not asking where they came from.

Once home I looked up the Animal, Vegetable, Miracle website to find the morel recipe that the book recommends. (I rented the book from the library around Christmastime. Highly recommend. Very eye opening and a great thing to read if you want to get started in growing your own food or just want to try to be a little more self-sufficient.) The recipe was for Asparagus and Morel Bread Pudding.

Another thing I had never been exposed to: Bread Pudding.

And I really had no interest. Bread pudding is one of those two-word foods that doesn’t sound like they should go together thus, as a child, I was pretty sure these were items that should not been eaten. See also: sour cream, sweet potato, or blue cheese. (I am getting better at this. In fact, thanks to “Cheese Day” in Home Ec during the sixth grade, I found a LOVE for strong cheeses, including blue cheese. Everyone else thought I was nuts. “She likes that moldy cheese?!” I am sure it did wonders for my popularity.)

So, that was a big “no” for the bread pudding. Plus, I really wanted to experience what the morels really taste like. Not have them masked by a lot of other ingredients. So, with Google as my guide, I looked up morel recipes.

There were a ton. Recipes that included chicken or adding the morels to pasta. Recipes for soup and different ways to deep fry them. I opted for a super simple recipe of just sautéing the morels with some butter and salt and pepper.

The first order of business was to clean the morels. You don’t want to wash them, but you do want to brush them off and then soak them in salted water for about fifteen minutes. It was at this step I read that one should not be alarmed if bugs or other debris, like dirt, comes out of the mushroom and is floating in the water.

Umm? Greeeat.

Because of this, I changed the water about ten minutes in. Didn’t want to take any chances!

Next I cut the morels in half, lengthwise, and laid them on paper towels until they were dry and didn’t leave any wet marks on the towels.

Then I added the mushrooms to four tablespoons of melted butter in a skillet over medium heat.

The morels cooked quickly as I pushed them gently around with a spatula.

Adam came in with chicken off the grill and we plated the food, after he commented on how great the kitchen smelled.

The sautéed morels received rave review that night. They were rich and meaty. Adam said that he was going to have to go hunting next year. (… Especially after I told him how much they sold for.)

I am looking forward to it because I would gladly do this recipe again.

…. Or maybe I will get adventurous, fight my childhood food-fear and make bread pudding.

Ice Cream and Me… “Mint” to Be.

Got Shrooms?