The Creamiest Homemade Vanilla Ice Cream EVER

I am not a competitive person.

Well, scratch that. I am competitive. I just don’t like being competitive. It stresses me out and if I’ve learned anything about myself over the years, it’s that I’d take peace and joy and all the good things I want to feel on a daily basis over winning and being top dog any day. It’s just that sometimes, in the midst of competition, I forget this little fact about myself and start caring about outcomes and placements and all the things. And honestly, I don’t like that and never walk away feeling good.

So this simple facet of my personality makes parenting a competitive athlete interesting.

On one hand, I don’t care. I don’t really care if my kid is first in every competition or last. I look at all the little gymnasts out there, knowing how many hours they put in, the stress they put their bodies and their minds under, and wonder why everyone can’t be #1. It doesn’t seem fair. I hate the intensity of the pressure to be the best. I hate the mental turmoil it creates. And I just want everyone to win.

At the same exact time, within my own same exact mind, I carry a completely contradictory yet equally strong set of beliefs and feelings about my actual daughter’s gymnastics career. I look at her in awe because she’s good. Like, really good. And sometimes I feel like she is taking over the world, one flip at a time. Other times, her attitude is a little haughty and I think her ego needs to be brought down a few pegs. I worry about whether she’s going to make it to her dreams or if I, in all of my ignorance, started her too young to get her there in time. I worry that the gym we chose might not be right for her. Even when I know it is. I worry. And I care deeply.

Then, because I am such a contradictory human being. I care about my caring and want to be chill. And I start all over again.

This, dear friends, is why therapy is good for me.

Anyway, lately this contradiction and this pressure have been ramping up in our lives with our little gymnast. She’s starting to train for her next competition season and with that comes all of the same worries, but amplified. The level she is on now is a giant leap from the one she competed last season and I’m worried she won’t have the same success and what that will do to her mentally. The chatter from the parents on the team seeps into me like a sponge and I absorb the energy of all of them, both good and bad. I worry that she’s way too young to be committing this much to a sport as a “career” when she should be busy playing Barbies and getting braces like I was at her age.

I worry. Like, way too much.

These past few weeks this fever pitch of worry was starting to take way more than it has been giving. I cannot stress enough that I do not like worrying like this about something that seems so inconsequential to me. It drives me nuts. I trust the gym. I trust my daughter. I trust her coaches. So the outside worry that creeps in, I hate it. It’s like anxiety on overdrive. And it was making me miserable.

A few nights ago it reached a peak. I was so uncomfortable and anxious in my worry that my skin felt like it was crawling. I couldn’t sleep. The dark of night a breeding ground, amplifying it, electrifying it.  The air was static, rippling with the worried vibes I was sending out into the atmosphere, and the weight of it all was smothering me, hot and breathless, like a heavy wet blanket. And I had had enough.

So, in the still darkness of our bedroom, where I lay wide awake next to a nearly comatose Jeff, I threw out a hail mary. It went a little bit like this:

Me: “Can I tell you something”

Jeff (mumbled and annoyed, half-asleep): “Hmmmm……”

Me: “I don’t think I can be a gym mom anymore. It robs me of my peace and it’s killing me.”

Then my husband, who sometimes gets it wrong, got it so right. Turning to face me in the dark, he put his calm and gentle hand on my trembling arm and whispered, “Then don’t. Let me.”

With four words he released me from something I was probably never suited to carry. He lifted the brick that was sitting on my chest and took the weight upon himself. With a gentle yet firm touch of his hand, he anchored me back to Earth and made an unspoken promise to keep me there.

The biggest part about this, though, is that I let him.

See, for a long time in parenting and marriage, I was a scorekeeper and a hard and fast line drawer. I was the homemaker, the mom, the go-to parent, and the carpool person. This was my role. I wanted all the checkmarks and ego trips that came with being the one “in the know” on all the kid’s comings and goings. And Jeff, well, he was the breadwinner, the always at the office, corporate ladder climber. He barely knew what sports our kids played, much less carried the weight of any of them. And while I might have complained, deep down inside it gave me a sense of worth to be the keeper of the knowledge, the go-to. This was my role, easily defined. It fed my ego and made me feel needed. There was no grey area, we were black and white.

But now, because COVID retaught us all how to live and Jeff works from home, our roles have shifted a little bit. He’s more active and participatory in our daily lives. He sees more. He takes part in more. It’s been an incredible blessing and has brought us closer in ways I can’t even explain in a 1000 word blog post. But it’s blurred those lines a little bit. And it’s been harder for me to let go of the hard and fast role of knowledge keeper. I feel less needed with every little role he takes on. And that’s been hard for me. It’s been an emotional roller coaster to hand over control of our day-to-day and let me go-to parent status diminish. And I haven’t always been willing to let him be, well, DAD.

But, the truth is that healthy parenting and healthy relationships need this type of give and take, this type of “I’ll pick up what you can’t carry until you’re ready to carry it again” type of back and forth. It’s so much better for us as a couple, and for our children, to allow space for each of us to be the parent they’re meant to be, wholly and completely, without hard and fast boundaries drawn only by our egos. Letting him take on the emotional weight of gym (and the competition duty) means letting him be the go-to for my daughter. And while that is hard for me, it’s also a role he’s better suited to because he’s calmer and more level-headed than I am. Because he doesn’t hurt for days when she hurts. Because he actually likes competition.

Now in no way am I saying that we have this parenting and marriage thing figured out. We miss more than we hit because life is hard and we are stubborn fools. But I am saying that sometimes, sometimes we get it right. And I am one lucky woman. Both because I don’t have to deal with gym stress for one more bloody second of my life, and because I have a husband willing to take it on for me. No questions asked.

The CREAMIEST Homemade Vanilla Ice Cream EVER

This ice cream. This Creamiest homemade vanilla ice cream ever. I honestly don’t know what to say about it. But I’m going to try because I think you all need something to hang on to about the food. I mean, this is a food blog after all…

So this recipe took quite a few tries to get just right. It was either too creamy and not vanilla-y enough or too vanilla-y and not creamy enough. One time it even had ice crystals in it (I blame that on technique). But when I finally got this batch down all 3 kids turned to me, nearly in unison, and gave me a giant thumbs up, the approval they know I was waiting for before publishing. So I guess we’ve got it down.

The first thing to know is that this creamiest homemade vanilla ice cream EVER has a high cream count, which makes it, you know, creamy. But what that also does it make it melt fast. So it’s something to consider when serving. If you need it for, say, summertime ice cream cones at a picnic, I would kick the cream down to 1 3/4 cup or even 1 1/2 and match the milk accordingly. For simple bowls of ice cream, though, it’s perfect.

This is a churn ice cream, so you’ll need an ice cream maker. Don’t have one? I got you, Boo. I shared our exact maker in last week’s What I’m Digging Wednesday and if you’re an ice cream lover, you might want to invest in one. I’ve got quite a few recipes I’m working on based on this foundation so you should definitely have one hanging around just in case.

Either way, this is one delicious bowl of classic vanilla ice cream. Full-on the flavor, heavy on the cream. It is to die for on a hot summer night. Pile it on top of Blueberry Cobbler or Peach Crumble for the ultimate summer dessert. Or enjoy it alone with this decadent fudge sauce on top.  Sometimes classics are best enjoyed like that.

Peace, love, and competition,

Meg

The CREAMIEST Homemade Vanilla Ice Cream EVER

June 10, 2021

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By: Meaghan Dawson

Ingredients

• 2 cups heavy cream
• 1 cup whole milk
• 2/3 cup sugar
• one big pinch of salt
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1/2 large vanilla bean, insides scraped, bean pod reserved

Directions

• Step 1 If required per your ice cream maker, pre-freeze the cylindar
• Step 2 In a medium heavy bottom pan, add 1 cup cream, salt, sugar, scraped vanilla beans and pod.
• Step 3 Bring to a low simmer under medium heat JUST until the suar is melted.
• Step 4 Remove from heat, stir in remaining cream, milk and vanilla extract.
• Step 5 Place cream in the fridge and cool completely. (You want it near freezing but NOT).
• Step 6 Once completely chilled, remove the bean pod and churn according to your ice cream maker’s instructions.
• Step 7 Freeze in a loaf pan or a freezer safe container for at least an hour before enjoying.

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