How can snow fall for this long? I am looking out our windows in disbelief as I ask this question. The snow started falling yesterday, mid-morning, and it has fallen steadily since then. It is now 4:15pm in the afternoon on Saturday, and the world outside is a blur of white: white snowflakes swirling, a steadily rising blanket of white covering what used to be our front yard, white as far as the eye can see. I understand why the Inuit have over one dozen words for snow*, and they use clever eyeshades to prevent snowblindness. I could use such an apparatus myself. This is looking to be the worst snowfall on record for the Washington, DC area, at least since records have been kept.
There's nothing like extreme weather to shatter our illusions of control, is there? Not that we haven't tried to control what we can. We grabbed the shovels like bulls by the horn and have been steadily shoveling the driveway every 2-3 hours or so since yesterday. But...what if the snow keeps falling? What if we hurt our backs? What if...well, we can't live by imagining the worst. We can just do our best, be thankful for the good stuff, and roll with it. And if the snow does nutty horrid things, there will come a point where ya just have to laugh. In the meantime, we need to keep shoveling and look at the up side of snow.
Enter snow cream.
"What the heck is that?" I wondered, as I read about someone's childhood memories of making this with her grandparents during snowfalls. I figured it was something creamy, and probably sweet. Ice cream made with snow? When I plugged the term "snow cream" into Google, up popped hundreds of entries. Most of the sources confirmed that snow cream is indeed ice cream made with snow and other ingredients. The notion of making a food with snow is, not surprisingly, very old. Yet in the USA at least, the concept appears to have taken hold predominantly in the South. The article, Desserts that Fall from the Sky by Eliza Barclay, cites some intriguing origins and variations. I can therefore add snow cream to my list of Southern foods I have discovered since moving from my native Chicago to Virginia almost two decades ago, along with grits and turducken. I picked this snow cream recipe and planned my strategy.
I did my best to observe the general rules of snow hygiene upon tackling this project: wait for the snow to fall for at least two hours, because it takes about that long for pollution to clear the atmosphere. And of course, pick a clean area free of animal tracks or other products (no duh) from which to collect the snow. Place a metal bowl down and let the snow collect in it. I did all these things to the best of my ability. After about 2 hours, the bowl was full. (This gives an idea of how strong the blizzard has been, too!)
Indoors, I mixed the ingredients of vanilla and sweetened condensed milk together. Then I brought the snow in, measured 8 cups of it into a large bowl, and poured the cream mixture over it. I rapidly mixed the whole thing together, and voila! Snow cream.
The verdict: this stuff is delicious! The color is darker than store-bought vanilla ice-cream, more like a rich tan. But our younger son and I ate it up, and loved it. Maybe tonight I will try another variation of it, like chocolate or cinnamon, as noted on the internet. Also, the consistency of snow cream when made with this recipe comes out more like ice milk or sorbet than ice cream. If you prefer the more creamy, smooth, almost elastic consistency of Italian gelato, add only 4 to 5 cups of snow. However, I noted that it kept well in the freezer overnight, in a Tupperware container. (But I wouldn't store it for too long, for fear of bacterial growth.)
Also, maybe next time I will try to use a simple heavy cream base with sugar. While the condensed milk tasted divine, it tastes so rich and distinctive that I couldn't do too much to alter it. I tried adding some Hershey's chocolate syrup to the already-made snow cream, but my son said "it still tastes like vanilla". So much for me trying to make a Chocolate Cheat version.
Ok, now that I have partaken of Mother Nature's bounty in a dessert, I will go mitigate her effects on our driveway. Back to shoveling more snow.
*http://www.mendosa.com/snow.html debunks the myth of the Inuit having hundreds of words for snow.
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