Were you gonna eat that?: The 32 Flavor Challenge

Hello out there! I'm Sara, and this is my first post to "Were you gonna eat that?" (I think). I wanna kick off my recipe with a brief-ish anecdote about ice cream....

So about a year ago the dolls of the dollhouse picked up an ice cream maker at our local Milford, CT church tag sale for about a dollar or so. We were skeptical about it actually working, but the thought of having on demand vegan ice cream was too great a thought for Elena to say no to. Our first attempts at becoming ice creamers were deemed edible by a group of potheads, but that's really not saying much about (cr)edibility...

Flash forward to May 7, 2009. I had just finished my first year of graduate school, quit my job at an "asian bistro" in a McFlurry of tears and obscenities, and was left with essentially nothing to do! I had dabbled in making food out of felt, getting my brain scanned for money and pillaging my Netflix queue; yet I still felt an emptiness in my heart.

Felt Edamame.

Opening up our freezer, I found our trusty little ice cream maker, nice and frozen after all those lonely months. At first I paid it no attention, after all I was on a mission for Tofutti cuties, everyone's favorite processed food dessert. Alas, the box was empty and I was without my creamed ice and sandwich cookie.

"Saaaaaraaaaaa......", called a faint chilly voice. No one was home and it couldn't be the cat, she had stopped communicating with me after that last acid trip.

I pressed my face deeper and deeper into the freezer until half my body was inside. "Wow! This freezer is a lot bigger than I thought". (Think The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, but a freezer). Luckily I was wearing my winter coat so I journeyed onwards, that voice getting closer and closer as I crawled further and further into the icebox.

Our ice box.

Suddenly, everything went dark and I felt this strange sensation, it was like I was falling, but I knew that couldn't be! Despite being inside my freezer a la Mr. Popper's Penguins, the laws of physics couldn't have failed me! Below me I could see a light, and it was getting closer and closer to me...or was I getting closer and closer to it? I began to make out a faint shape, it was similar to a truck.....strangely similar to an ice cream truck.....ok, it was an ice cream truck. I could no longer cling to rational thought; I had definitely fallen off the edge of reality via my freezer, and I was rapidly approaching a floating ice cream truck.

I fell and fell, passing the ice cream truck, banana splits, creamsicles, snocones, and other varieties of sundae. (Think Alice in Wonderland, but with ice cream). As I fell through a cloud of rainbow sprinkles, I began to suspect that my descent would never end. But as soon as the thought passed through my brain I landed on the ground with a thud. I looked around and around, and couldn't believe my eyes; standing in front of me was my ice cream maker! It was alive! And talking to me!

“Greetings Sara. So glad you could make it to the nether regions of the fridge, it's awfully lonely back here”.

“Uhhhh.....what do you want from me?”, I asked my ice cream maker.

“I'm here to inform you about the 32 flavor challenge. You're our only hope!”

“What are you talking about? Does this have something to do with Baskin Robbins?”

“No, no, no!! Damn that ice cream man!” my little ice cream maker screamed, “We're talkin' about something totally different....Sara, we need you to make 32 flavors of vegan ice cream and we need them to be good, like really good”.

“Well I don't know.....I mean i'm pretty busy”. I lied, I mean who did this ice cream maker think it was?

“Oh c'mon, I know what you do all day....let's be real. The fate of the vegan ice cream universe rest in your hands”.

“But I can't do this alone!”

“Don't worry, I'll be by your side, the two of us will take over the ice cream universe....together”.

“Oh ice cream maker, I love you! Let's get on this challenge!”

When I came to, I was laying on the floor and my roommate Anna was hovering over me.

“Dude, are you ok?”

“My god Anna, I just fell into this parallel ice cream universe and the ice cream maker told me I had to do this 32 flavor challenge to save the ice cream universe....so anyways I am gonna do it”.

I opened the freezer in hopes of showing her where I had been, but it was just a freezer. I took my trusty ice cream maker in my hands, held it close, and whispered into it's handle, “Don't worry baby, we're gonna make it through this”.

“Whoa, dude”, Anna interjected, “you have way too much free time, maybe you should get your brain scanned again”.

Me and my baby after our long journey.

So there you have it. The 32 flavor challenge. Maybe it was a little long winded, but I'm on a mission and I just thought you should know about it.

Flavor #1 Earl Green Tea

Ingredients:

2 T. arrowroot

4 C. soy milk

5 teabags of Earl Green

½ C. sugar or other natural sweetener

1 t. pure vanilla extract

This recipe is an adaptation of the ice cream recipe from Vegan Planet. Earl Green Tea is like, Earl Grey, but with green tea, rather than black. It's da bomb. I used the Trader Joe's brand. The flavor is quite nice....subtle like other green tea ice creams, but with a hint of Fruit Loopy bergamot oil.

1. In a small bowl, combine ¼ C. of soymilk and arrowroot, blend and set aside.

2. In a medium size sauce pan, heat the rest of the soy milk to a simmer. Keep stirring, don't let it boil! When the milk is heated, add the tea bags and let them steep for about 5 minutes or so.

3. After the bags have steeped, take them out and discard 'em. Then add the arrowroot mixture and stir until it thickens. You should be able to feel it thicken. Don't let it boil! Keep the heat nice and low.

4. Once it has thickened, remove the pan from heat, add the sugar and stir till it dissolves. Go ahead and add the vanilla extract. If you would like (I did) add a couple drops of green and yellow food coloring to get a nice pale green tea color.

5. Let the mixture cool, then refrigerate it till it's nice and cold. The colder the better. Then freeze in ice cream maker.