Back in the 1960’s I had lots of friends who all used to curry favour with me in the hopes of becoming regular invitees to my weekly-held Saturday night dinner parties. Some succeeded more often than others. Notably, Alan R, the son of a butcher who worked in his father’s business, who would sequester the most memorable, thick-cut pork chops for me ‘for free’ to secure his seat at my table. It was a fair exchange.
He would cut the chops at least an inch thick so that I could I slice them horizontally through their middles to make a ‘pocket’ that I would stuff generously with sage and onion before sewing them back up with string and slow cooking in a rich cider sauce. As delicious as this meal was, what really rocked my friends’ boat was a dessert of hot, melty chocolate poured over cold, creamy, vanilla ice cream.
You’d think that the authors of Wall’s current product marketing were ‘a fly on the wall’ at my dinner parties 50 years ago, when they say: “Bring your family together with Wall's delicious Ice Cream that everyone loves, it is so easy to connect, laugh and truly bond.”
They’re not lying. It’s exactly how I remember my ‘hostess with the mostest' glory days. Now I’m fine with being forgotten. Wall’s vanilla ice cream and hot chocolate sauce made from Cadbury’s Bournville chocolate served with aplomb in a previous life may have helped make my dinner parties legendary, but today, even the thought of serving a ‘killer dessert’ of ultra-processed foods made with very low-cost ingredients gives me the heebie-geebies. Learn the chilling truth about commercial ice cream and weep!
Let’s just say, my foolhardy pursuit of social pleasures in my early twenties, which also included smoking up to forty cigarettes a day and regularly drinking myself into oblivion, was largely done in ignorance. As daft as it seems to me now, I didn’t realise the harm I was doing to myself with cigarettes and alcohol and perhaps of even more significance, without access to the internet, I didn’t have a clue about what was going on with the food supply. At the time, there was no way of knowing that the burgeoning food industry’s new-fangled creations were essentially cobbled together from industrially-made substances to make them look and taste (more or less!) like real food, albeit with very little nutritional value.
The late 1960’s supporters of women’s liberation, as well as men resistant to taking on their fair share of domestic duties, happily abdicated the responsibility for cooking to Big Food - and with it control over their health - in exchange for more free time. We now live in a society (UK) where over half the food purchases that people make are ultra processed and I am considered strange by conventional standards because I avoid all unreal food and drink. When I recently commented to a young friend that the cocktail she was drinking was the same bright, fluorescent pink as the skirt she was wearing, she quickly retorted “At least I’ll die happy!” Actually no, you probably won’t. The inconvenience of ‘convenience’ is that Big Agri and Big Food makes you sick and Big Pharma sells you supposed cures. This generally means spending your golden years in pain and suffering whilst waiting to die more slowly. That’s not for me, thanks.
There’s only one ice cream ‘to die for’ and it’s homemade, vanilla ice cream.
This feel-good, does-you-good, No-Sugar Old-Fashioned Vanilla Ice Cream tastes like heaven…just like ice cream used to before the food industry hijacked everyone’s favourite dessert and turned it into sickly-sweet, soft-scoop, emulsified, synthetically-flavoured gunk.
Vanilla is an orchid whose seed pods are fermented and cured to produce its popular fragrance and flavour. It’s expensive. Vanillin, the main constituent of vanilla flavouring is what men in white coats use to make vanilla flavoured ice cream. Cheaply extracted from clove oil, waste material from the paper and wood pulp industry and petrochemical products, you may not even be able to taste the difference.
Rich, smooth, creamier than cream, sweet-as-you like and packed with fragrant, real vanilla, No-Sugar, Old-Fashioned Vanilla Ice Cream is a kind-of-magic food that LCHF naysayers tell you you’re not ‘supposed’ to eat if you’re watching your waistline. Basically, they’re talking claptrap.
What is true for both weight-watchers and the health conscious is that you can’t eat humongous amounts of carbohydrates together with unlimited amounts of fat. You can either eat fat to fuel your body’s energy needs (meat, fish, dairy, eggs and dark chocolate) or starch a.k.a glucose (sugar, pasta, rice, potatoes and bread) but whichever one you choose, you need to control your intake of the other.
There’s a turf war going on between self-serving diet dictocrats trying to foist a one-size-fits all, nutritionally deficient, primarily plant-based (grains), high-carb (sugar saturated), low-fat diet (ultra processed seed oils) and the growing fraternity of independent scientists, doctors, dieticians, journalists and self-helpers living in the real world, who know the exact opposite to be true. Dr Zoë Harcombe Ph.D. brilliantly cuts through ‘carbfusion’ in her point-by-point response to Slimmers World experts who claim that “low-carb is damaging the nations health" and there are “13 Ways that carbs help you LOSE weight”.
It’s your body, your health, your choice but if you’re struggling with chronic health conditions and/or excess weight, a 21-day diet experiment eating low-carb (less than 50 grams daily) lets you be the judge. Listen to your body; it doesn’t lie. Most people will find the easiest and quickest way to burn excess body fat is to eat real food (start counting chemicals, stop counting calories) and to use food as an excuse to add more dietary fat…drizzle oil on top…trickle over dressing…spoon on hollandaise…dollop on cream…spread with mayo…melt over butter…garnish with cheese, olives, nuts, seeds and avocado. Getting slim and staying slim never tasted this good.
It may seem counter-intuitive that No-Sugar, Old-Fashioned Vanilla Ice Cream made from wholesome, organic ingredients - full-fat dairy milk, double cream and biodynamic egg yolks - can help you fight the flab, but it is so. Nothing serves your body and brain better than a well-formulated, high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet and this luxurious ice cream is so fat-rich that once you’ve committed to eating low-carb, you could do a lot worse than treat yourself to a bowlful each and every day! It’s not the cheapest ice cream in the world, but then I don’t want cheap food, I want nutritious food.
Beyond buying organic food for its nutrient density and lack of chemicals, Primal Plate’s overriding advice is: cook your own meals.
With delicious, homemade keto bread and ice cream recipes to chivvy you along the road to dietary independence, true liberation is finding your way back to body wellness by doing the best for yourself. It takes courage and radical self-determination to take back control of what you eat. The question is, do you think you’re worth it?
Industrial agriculture is one of the most unsustainable, destructive practices of modern civilisation. GMO crops, agri-chemicals, ultra processed food and lab-created food substitutes are poisoning people en masse. The distressed and diseased human body is the pharmaceutical industry’s marketplace. Long-term sickcare, not healthcare, pays its shareholders. This unholy trinity of Big Business is killing humans and harming animals and the environment for profit. The answer lies in you transitioning from unreal food to natural food obtained from sustainable, regenerative, chemical-free farming.
So what do you want to eat today?
No-Sugar, Old-Fashioned Vanilla Ice Cream (serves 8)
Ingredients
450ml organic full-fat milk (see Notes below)
450ml organic double cream
150g non GMO erythritol
1 tbsp organic vanilla extract
Instructions
Split the vanilla pods down the centre and place with the milk and cream into a heavy based saucepan pan - preferably one with a pouring edge.
Heat to just below boiling point (you’ll see little bubbles appear at the edge of the pan).
Immediately take the pan off the heat, cover and allow to stand for one hour to allow the flavours to infuse.
Remove the vanilla pods and with the tip of a small pointy knife or the edge of a teaspoon, scrape out the seeds, adding them back into the infused mixture. Discard the pods.
Gently re-heat to just below boiling point.
In the meantime, whisk the egg yolks and erythritol together in a large deep bowl until pale and thick.
Gradually pour the hot cream into the egg yolk mixture, whisking continuously until combined.
Return the mixture to a clean pan and set over a medium heat. Stir the mixture constantly until it reaches a temperature of 85℃ (takes about 4-6 minutes) or alternatively until the custard coats the back of a spoon i.e. when you run your finger through it, the trail left stays put. See image below.
Pour the custard through a fine sieve into a large clean metal or glass bowl and cover its surface with baking parchment to stop a skin forming. Tip: I use a pre-cut baking parchment circle.
Allow the custard to cool to room temperature. To save time, plunge the bowl into cold water then when its cool, chill in a refrigerator for a couple of hours or overnight.
When completely chilled, remove the baking parchment and stir in the vanilla extract.
Churn in an ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions until the ice cream is soft set.
Scrape into a glass, freezer proof container and freeze for about 4 hours.
Take out of the freezer about 30 minutes before serving to allow the ice cream to soften slightly.
Notes
I think No-Sugar, Old-Fashioned Vanilla Ice Cream is best appreciated when it’s served simply without embellishment. However, if you’re curious to know why my friends used to rave about my retro dessert of ice cream with hot chocolate sauce, the Hot Chocolate Sauce recipe will be the next to feature on this blog.
I use Gazegill Organics raw (unpasteurised) milk to make my ice cream because that’s the only milk I ever buy. However, because this recipe means heating and holding the milk at a higher temperature than is required for the pasteurisation of milk, it makes no difference if you use pasteurised milk to make it. For the lactose intolerant, A2 pasteurised milk maybe an even better option.
Fat 24g Protein 3g Carbohydrate 5g - per serving of vanilla ice cream
