Seasonal Veggies and Ice Cream
It’s hard to say what I’m most excited about as I foolishly contemplate the coming spring. I say foolishly because it’s likely going to take a while to get here. All I can say is that I’m glad I didn’t take the snow tires off the car this week.
How crazy is it that the Snowman in Troy will open up the day after Little Miss Fussy was dreaming of building a snowman of her own from the big fat flakes falling from the sky. You know what’s also crazy? The Roxbury CSA hasn’t sold out in the Capital Region yet. That means you stragglers who thought you might be locked out of this amazing farm share are in luck. Here’s the note I got from the farmers:
There are still shares available at all sites in the Capital District, but a few sites are close to full . . . make sure not to miss out – send in your form now! You can find the enrollment forms on the website www.roxburyfarm.com under ‘CSA Membership’ and ‘Capital District’.
I’m already thinking about grilling the wild ramps this year and eating them all myself, long before CSA season kicks in. And I’ve got a fresh new blade on the Cuisinart that is hungry to pulverize some scapes into a verdant puree. But my spring fantasies can come to life earlier in the form of the re-opening of our season ice cream stands.
Speaking of which, this would make a great time to answer addiesdad’s question about local ice cream.
Daniel, what’s up with guargum etc. in local ice cream? Why is it even there? On Saturday, I picked up a pint of Battenkill’s Mint Chocolate Chunk at the Saratoga Farmer’s Market as a treat for my daughter and I. As I was scooping it out I decided to check the ingredients hoping to find the most basic of ice cream ingredients (and expecting there to be 5 or fewer of those ingredients, mint and chocolate notwithstanding). What did I find? To my astonishment guar gum and other thickeners/stabilizers I normally expect to find in national and large scale ice cream (B & J’s, Stewart’s, etc), but not Battenkill Creamery! So, what is the deal with these ingredients? Are they to be avoided at all costs, or are they the price for Battenkill and others to be able to ship around the region without excessive melting? I probably shouldn’t have been as surprised as I was, since I did leave the pint in the trunk of the car, and it didn’t seem to be as melted as I expected. Thoughts?
Yeah. This is the dark side of ice cream. Even local ice cream.
The seasonal stands, even the places that exist alongside dairies or claim that they make their own ice cream, are often not the wholesome products one might expect. And as consumers, we can let our critical analysis romp around in the dandelion patch of our minds, since at the ice cream window there is no list of ingredients to examine.
It’s easy to perpetuate the fantasy that just because a shop makes their own ice cream that they do it without thickening agents, commercial emulsifiers and artificial colors or flavors.
But for the most part it is indeed a fantasy.
Last year on the Tour de Homemade Hard Ice Cream I was embarrassed by The Snowman’s almost neon-pink strawberry that tasted nothing like actual strawberries and everything like artificial strawberry flavor. The question is why go through all the work of making your own if you are just going to dump a bunch of artificial ingredients in to give it color, taste and texture?
Even the ice cream that most of us loved from The Ice Cream Man has a deep dark secret that reveals itself on the labels of its pints. Their ice cream also contains guar gum in addition to other additives.
The thing is that making ice cream is hard. Or rather, perhaps I should say, homemade ice cream has a tendency to get really hard. Personally, I’ve given up trying to make my own at home. But perhaps it’s just that I haven’t found the right recipes or techniques.
Regardless, all the ice cream I’ve made is really soft out of the churn, and then freezes into a solid block that barely resembles the creamy product that came out of the machine. Guar gum can prevent ice crystals from growing in ice cream and that can be a hardening culprit. Xantham gum is a stabilizer that helps to keep the ice cream light and airy.
The real question perhaps is how does Haagen Dazs make their ice cream so good.
I think the answer is simply egg yolks and butterfat. A high butterfat content keeps it silky and the egg yolks work as a natural emulsifier. Locally, the one brand that comes to mind which rises to this level is Adirondack Creamery.
Breyers didn’t used to have gums in their ice cream, and thanks to that and the generous amount of air churned into their product, the result was the light and refreshingly icy vanilla bean that I knew and loved. Now it has so much dreck in it that much of Breyers is no longer even ice cream. Some people will notice that ice cream adulterated with food gums and commercial emulsifiers will leave an unpleasant film in their mouth while ice cream without junk in it will finish cleanly.
I do. But most people prize “creaminess” beyond anything else and will make sacrifices to deliver this attribute. I think it’s wrong. And I think it’s wrong to pay high ice cream prices for something that takes short cuts using cheaper ingredients.
That said, guar gum will not hurt you. Heck, the more we eat the less there is for fracking. The federal government will say carrageenan is perfectly safe too, but I’m not entirely convinced they have that one right.
Battenkill breaks my heart. They do such good things with their milk that I’m amazed they let high fructose corn syrup into their strawberry ice cream, caramel coloring in their coffee ice cream and carrageenan in all of them. I know that I don’t buy their ice cream exactly for these reasons. Sorry. I should have warned you sooner.
Stay vigilant.
FUSSYlittleBLOG 
Thanks, addiesdad, I was going to ask the same question! I was surprised to find locust bean gum in the ingredients of Golden Organics. I know now that I prefer gum-free ice cream.
We also used to buy chocolate milk from a local dairy until we read the ingredients one day and found hfcs. We make our own now with Daniel’s chocolate syrup recipe & Meadowbrook Farms’ milk.
And, by the way, if you’re making your own ice cream, add a bit of alcohol to keep it soft: http://www.davidlebovitz.com/2007/07/tips-for-making-1/
Well, ice cream should only have four basic ingredients, cream, milk, organic cane sugar, eggs and then “natural flavorings”. I guess I’m getting closer to gelato here than ice cream but this is how it SHOULD be. Where to find it I don’t know and besides DB it’s not on your diets list of top foods. That said you can’t beat great ice cream, except maybe gelato stands on the streets of Rome.
oh, i just looked at the ingredients for emack and bolios. corn syrup in almost everything (though not usually HFCS). i love the dark chocolate goat’s milk ice cream from the coop and i guess we will have to make our own a lot this summer. or stick to haagen daz until they change to cheaper ingredients, too.
and now just looked up the goat’s milk stuff–guar gum and carrageenan and locust bean gum.
Adirondack Creamery is good, but it can get icy so beware.
Anyone interested in sharing a Roxbury share? I’m single and can’t handle a full share on my own. I’d be looking at the Schenectady pick up location.
Unrelated question to the other posters on this thread. I am really interested in the CSA produce share for 23 weeks. I am curious about the size of an average weekly share. Is it a reasonable amount that could be used during the week without fear of waste? Our dogs are veggie fiends that eat anything (excluding the toxic world of onions, garlic and grapes) so it might be a mute point. Any thoughts from FLB fans would be greatly appreciated!
I can’t speak specifically for Roxbury, but a full share from a CSA is a LOT of vegetables. We’re taking a year off from CSA (for both personal reasons and because our CSA is on hiatus this year for business reasons), but we split with friends when we did it, and a half share was plenty for us (and we cook with a lot of fresh veggies). From what I’ve seen of Daniel’s posts, Roxbury’s share looks bigger/has more variety than ours did, on average.
That said, you should split with StanfordSteph, since she’s looking for a partner. She’s good people. :)
A half share was at many times overwhelming even for 2 adults, when there were bunches and bunches of greens, which don’t keep. Before you get to them it’s time for the next share. I did a lot of grilling, then freezing. Also, I found prepping the greens right away made it easier later. Then I stopped the CSA in favor of visits to farmer’s markets and found the stress gone. I buy what I realistically will use. It was a positive experience, however.
That’s what we are going to do this year. We really liked our farmer and developed a personal relationship with him, so we wanted to continue to support him, but since he is not doing the CSA this year (at least, not a local drop-off; it is significantly smaller and farm pick up only, and the farm is over an hour away), we decided it was a good idea to experiment with buying what we need/what we like at the markets. I’m going to track our spending on this over the length of the season and see how we fare.
I briefly considered Cornell, as theirs is sort of designed like this, where half the share they choose, half you choose, however it’s not uncommon for us to be away for multiple weekends during the season & they only transact the shares at the weekend markets.
I’ve noted most or all of the “local” dairy ice creams contain gums – check out all varieties in honest weight. So sad. I’m sticking withwith Hagen Das for now.
Tip: make your own semefreddo from eggs and heavy cream. No ice cream maker, gums, Additives, colorings…add what you want. It takes 15 minutes. It is richer and tastes better than any gelato or on the market ice cream you’ll ever find. We’ll start making it again soon at All Good Bakers.
I agree with you about Hagen Dazs. Their choc-choc chip is my favorite. Miss their mocha chip. Hood was a childhood favorite, especially their choc, choc covered almond ice cream. it is a bargain price wise also!
Re: Battengill – we regularly drink their milk (and give it to our 2 year old) and we were dismayed to learn that their egg nog (“all natural”!) contained high fructose corn syrup. Major bummer.