I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream for... Bacon???

The co-op kitchen where I work

Hethyr:  As many of you may already know, I recently moved my business, Everyday Gourmet Colorado, into a commercial kitchen so I can focus more on cooking and less on lugging my cooking equipment around with me to clients' houses.  I have found several benefits to operating out of the Gotta Love It Kitchen, but possibly the most fun aspect is that I now get to sell my homemade ice cream out of the retail space at the front of the store.

I think it would be fairly safe to say that ice cream is, without a doubt, my very favorite food in the whole world.  EVER.  Bacon is a close second with crab legs trailing by a claw.  If I could eat ice cream and/or bacon for every meal and every snack (okay, maybe with the occasional crab leg thrown in for good measure) and not be horribly unhealthy and weigh at least a ton, I would. I most definitely would!

I remember my parents making ice cream in one of those kind of old-school ice cream makers with rock salt when I was really little (my mom and dad are sometimes freaked-out by how far back my memories stretch!).  I also remember Mom making "snow ice cream" when my sisters and I were small.  If my memory serves me correctly, the ingredients were clean snow (we had to make sure it wasn't yellow!), milk, sugar and vanilla.  Memories of Dad making ice cream "soup" still make me laugh.  He would get a heaping bowl of ice cream, stir in chocolate and peanuts - you know, "stir in" is not even close to describing what my dad would do with this ice cream...  he turbo-whipped it until it was approximately the consistency of wet cement, then he would turn the bowl upside-down with the spoon still in it and the spoon would not fall out.  I kid you not.  

Two Xmases ago Jon and I bought our nieces and nephews on my side of the family ice cream makers.  The youngest niece, Delle, was too young to join in on the fun, so she received an "I Scream" onesie.  I apologized to my sister, Shaye, that she was just getting the onesie and Shaye's reply was "Don't worry, Hethyr.  She's a Helton (our maiden name).  It's a given that she'll have to have a bowl of ice cream every night in order to go to sleep."  Needless to say, ice cream is a tradition... okay, let me be honest here... an obsession in my family.

When Jon gave me an ice cream maker a few years ago for my birthday, he said he actually kind of felt bad for it because it meant more time in the kitchen for me.  Little did he know that this would be one of my all-time favorite gifts! I think the first successful batch I made was fresh Peach-Vanilla Bean, followed by Bourbon-Pumpkin-Pecan for Thanksgiving.  That year, I also made Peppermint-Dark Chocolate Chip as a holiday gift for my clients - it was a HUGE hit!  I have messed around with lots of other flavors and several of them are now for sale at the Gotta Love It Kitchen.  Maple-Bacon (yes, I actually make ice cream with bacon in it - my two favorite foods combined!) has become my specialty.  In all of my ice creams, I use organic cream, milk and vanilla.  The sugar I use is organic, fair-trade and as much as possible, the add-ins are organic also.  The chocolate is organic, fair-trade, the fruit is organic, the bacon has no antibiotics, no added hormones and no preservatives and comes from vegetarian fed, humanely raised and humanely harvested animals.  I try to be responsible when choosing my ingredients - I wouldn't feed my customers anything I wouldn't put into my own body!  More flavors will come as the ideas do and I'm always open to suggestions.  Here is a list of my current flavors:

• Butter Pecan
• Chocolate (the best EVER in our opinions!)
• Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough
• Coconut
• Maple-Bacon (!!!)
• Mocha-Chip
• Peanut Butter-Nutella (my Dad is begging for me to send him this one!)
• Peppermint-Dark Chocolate Chip
• Vanilla
• White Chocolate-Raspberry
• Peach (seasonal)
• Strawberry (seasonal)

And coming soon:

• Blackberry-Mint
• Bourbon-Butter Pecan
• etc., etc., etc.

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Jon:  There was an ice sculpting event last weekend in Old Colorado City, the neighborhood of Hethyr's kitchen.  While the ice carvings and related activities were a little bit lame, there were thousands of people walking around throughout the weekend.  Many of the good folks who share the co-op kitchen with Hethyr had tables set up on the sidewalk selling their various food products.  We took the opportunity to offer free ice cream samples to spread the word about the tasty new endeavor.


We ended up giving out hundreds of samples to the people walking by, but it was the people who we didn't give samples to that I was skeptical about.  As far as I'm concerned, I just don't think I can trust anyone who continues walking away from me as I'm saying the words "free ice cream samples."  I was especially dumbfounded when someone would look over and say something to the effect of "ooohhh


We offered Maple-Bacon, Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough and Peanut Butter-Nutella as samples.  It was fun to see peoples' reactions to the words "bacon" and "ice cream" together.  Some people scrunched their faces like they had just sucked a lemon, some were confused and others reacted as though experiencing spiritual enlightenment.  For those adventurous enough to try it, about 90 percent of them reacted with intense pleasure, even the skeptical ones that we pressured into sampling.  It was a satisfying experience.  The thing that amazes me about the maple-bacon is that you initially only taste the maple, then the tiny, crunchy bacon pieces provide a savory aftertaste.  It's really incredible.  And it's hilarious to me that vegetarians can't eat it (no offense... it's just that carnivorous ice cream cracks me up).


Despite my love for the maple-bacon, I don't even think it's my favorite flavor of Hethyr's.  All of it is ridiculously good and I look forward to getting fat on it for years to come.  I also love that the containers are compostable, so if you enjoy the ice cream so much that you pass out and drop your container on the ground, it will naturally return to the Earth.

Our nephew, Roc, passed out with a Helton-sized ice cream cone