Wednesday, January 30, 2013

I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream For Pai-Scream

January 8, 2013

Our friend E-Moe works for this awesome company called Light My Fire. A few days before Ashley left he asked us if we wanted to take a few items with us, maybe some sporks that we could give to strangers in exchange for other goods. If you know us at all then you know we jumped at the chance to have a silly reason to approach strangers. And so Eric showed up at the airport 1 minute before Ashley went through security and bestowed upon us 100 sporks, 1 lantern and....1 ice cream maker.

If you've ever backpacked then you know lugging around an ice cream maker the size of a soccer ball may not be one of the most practical things you could be doing. But Kyle, our photographer/sherpa was with us and did all the schlepping of our treasures. Then he left. And while we had taken full advantage of our lantern due to little/no electricity in our bungalows and given away several sporks, we'd yet to make ice cream and wondered why we were still carrying this contraption around.

When we got to Pai and met our three new besites, we knew it was time to shake it till you make it. Armed with no recipe and no understanding of the Thai written language, we headed to the 7-11 in search of what we assumed would be the ingredients for ice cream.

We spent 5 minutes deciding which carton of milk, if even milk, might have the highest cream content. We picked up some salt to keep the ice cool, some coconut milk for flavor and since we couldn't find sugar, we decided to try sweetened condensed milk. All for only $2.50. We headed to our usual starting point, High 5, where the bartender gladly provided us with ice.

Our original recipe for coconut ice cream:

1 kiddy sized milk w/straw
1 small can sweetened condensed milk
1 small carton coconut milk
1 giant bag of salt (give the leftovers to your bartender)
Lots of ice
1 Light My Fire ice cream maker
1 spork

Pour all the milk into the inner canister. Add some coconut milk and sweetened condensed milk. Taste. Keep adding coco milk and sweetened condensed milk until everyone is happy with the flavor. Seal it up. Put ice in the outer compartment. Add some salt, seal it up, and start shaking.

You can play catch with it, dance with it, make a drinking game out if it, just keep it moving for 20 minutes. Strangers will approach you and offer to shake it in exchange for a bite later.

We were all unsure if our experiment was actually going to work but 20 minutes later when we opened the ball we had the most delicious coconut ice cream we've ever tasted. Something about our unique mix of ingredients caused the outer layer to freeze pretty hard but we had our sporks and were able to scoop it all out after a few minutes of thawing.

We are reusing this picture because all the other ice cream pictures are at the bottom of the ocean. The red ball is the ice cream maker.


Our first ice cream attempt was a huge success and we managed to make some new friends out of it. We are now on the look out for chocolate chips for our next batch.

Thanks for the presents, Eric!

-Kim

5 comments:

  1. You have been lugging an ICE CREAM MAKER around this whole time????

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  2. I am desperately sad for the upcoming lack of pictures. I am in love with your new girlfriend's smile...so pretty! I am DYING to try to make this Pai-Scream. I am seriously lacking hugs from both of you. I am hoping you don't forget to come home....eventually. And I'm not going to stop reminding you.

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  3. We're cracking up in the office. Awesome story!

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  4. We're cracking up in the office. Awesome story!

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