Just recently my
mother asked me to pick up some vanilla ice cream she wanted to serve
with a pie she had made. I came home with a gallon of 'Pet' vanilla ice
cream. She asked me why, out of all the brands at the grocery store,
would I choose 'Pet?' I told her grocery store ice cream,whether it
be Ben and Jerry's, Hagen Daaz or Pet all tasted the same to me and
that Pet was the cheapest.
When I was growing up, my mother would make homemade ice cream in the summer from the local peaches using a hand-cranked ice cream churn. We would take turns "churning" and adding endless amounts of rock salt for what seemed like hours until it was ready. That is what ice cream is supposed to taste like and if you've never had homemade ice cream, do yourself a favor a buy an ice cream churn. They make electric ones now with no hand crank churning required.
My husband Leo loves ice cream. I like it, but he loves it. For a
wedding present, we received a wooden ice cream maker that like the old
fashioned ones, needed to be filled with ice and rock salt, but unlike
the old fashioned ones, could be plugged in and churned the ice cream
without the 'elbow grease.' Once every few years, we'd pull it out and
impress ourselves by making a batch of lovely vanilla ice cream, but it
was always a big production for the results. About 6 or 7 years ago,
as a birthday gift for my ice cream loving husband who almost always
has a quart of vanilla in the freezer, I bought a double Cuisinart
automatic ice cream machine. It consists of a motorized bottom,
plastic churners and plastic covers with two metal containers which I
keep in the freezer at all times.
A group of good friends, connected by a love of politics and good food, always used to get together every August in Santa Barbara. Life slowed down; we’d cook together using all local produce – sweet corn, plum tomatoes, Armenian cucumbers, peppers, tomatillos, Blenheim apricots, avocadoes, Santa Rosa plums – and then feast as the sun went down behind rolling hills planted with avocadoes and lemons. 
We've got a few ice cream machines in our house. Two of them we've had for years. They're identical with their big plastic tub that holds a can with a paddle inside of it, with plenty of room between the can and the sides of the tub to pack in lots of ice and salt.
Ever since making