A Handful of Frugal Moments

Last week, Melissa Clark of the New York Times wrote an article on "How to Make No-Churn Salted Caramel Ice Cream" (also titled "The Easiest Salted Caramel Ice Cream Doesn’t Require a Machine"). I like Clark's writings and she did her usual excellent job of describing the process, the ingredients, and the results. 

However, this being the New York Times, the recipe was available only if you are subscribed to its special Cooking subscription, which is not included in a regular subscription. I believe the Cooking subscription is $1.25 a week.

A week. That is $65.00 a year. While I am quite willing to pay $20 every four weeks for a subscription to the Times (and yes, at $260 a year, I admit that this is both a privilege and a luxury), I am not willing to subscribe to an additional feature that I know I would use only sporadically. I know, I could subscribe for a week, spend a chunk of my time sifting through the recipes for gold, then cancel, but life is short. (This reminds me of when a friend, hearing me rave about Reservation Dogs when it premiered, said "Well, you could subscribe to Hulu for the new subscriber rate, binge watch, then cancel." Yeah, I could.)

So without access to the special Cooking subscription, I did what many of us do: I Googled "no-churn salted caramel ice cream." Within a few minutes, I found one that followed the spirit, ingredients, and process of the one Melissa Clark wrote about, and decided to follow it.

That was Frugal Moment #1: Coming up with an alternative recipe without paying for it.

The recipes called for three ingredients: heavy cream, sweetened condensed milk, and caramel sauce. The first two went on the list for a very brief shopping trip Sunday morning.

The caramel sauce? 

Well, that was Frugal Moment #2. A number of years ago, at one of our monthly legal clinics, a dear friend who was also one of our regular volunteers came to me with a smile and something hidden behind her back. "I thought of you when I saw this," she said. 

It was a jar of caramel sauce. It has sat on a kitchen shelf ever since, just waiting for its moment in the spotlight. 

How long has it waited? Well, the lid has a best used date of...March, 2015. Knowing how items are dated, that jar and gift may date back to 2014. 

No problem. It was fresh and it poured as needed. 

The very patient caramel sauce
(Sounds like a children's book title, doesn't it?)

The recipe took less than 20 minutes to make, with cleanup taking another 10. And the result? 

Superb.

Taste testing! I think our two scoops per serving equal one scoop from a shop. 

I did a little math about this dessert. Since we had the caramel sauce already, that left the heavy cream ($2.89) and the sweetened condensed milk ($2.19) as the outlay for what filled a two-quart loaf pan. To put that quantity into perspective, a container of ice cream at the store is generally 1.5 quart, not 2 quarts (which would be a half gallon, the standard of my childhood). So for $5.08, we have a half gallon of heaven.

And to put that $5.08 into further perspective, I measured it against the places we go when we treat ourselves to ice cream. Downtown at Whit's, which is within easy walking distance, for two one-scoop servings? $8.00. Handmade incredible ice cream at Sticky Fingers in Kilbourne? Two single scoops at $3.95 each, or $7.90. Kilbourne is 6.5 miles, more or less, from Delaware, so add gas too for a 13-mile round trip. Midway Market in Ostrander, which carries delicious Hershey ice cream flavors? Two single scoops for $3.00 each, or $6.00 total, and that is a 16 miles round trip. (I am not comparing prices to soft-serve ice cream, because that really is a whole different food group, but I will just note that our favorite soft-serve stand, for very sentimental reasons, is in a little village called Prospect, which is 14 miles away. We usually spend somewhere from $5.00 to $6.00 for our combined orders.) 

It all adds up. And that was Frugal Moment #3: we beat the spread. By a long shot. Because we will be getting more than 2 scoops of deliciousness from this recipe. In fact, the next day I divided the ice cream into containers for later. (Of course, I saved some for now!)

Plenty left after our initial tasting! 

There are many other reasons for going out for ice cream. Spending time away with no interruptions of office or shop is one. This allows us, especially Warren, to set aside some of the daily stress and stressors. Giving ourselves a different space in which to talk is another. (This is sometimes related to setting aside stress, sometimes related to feeling we need to connect differently after a hard day.) Meeting up with friends coming in from another direction for an ice cream rendezvous is another great reason (yes, David, I mean you and Vinny). So I am not beating myself (or ourselves) up for taking those ice cream trips and I know they will continue. 

But this week, at least, we are enjoying our homemade, handmade, fancy-schmancy NYT knockoff salted caramel ice cream and savoring every single bite. And the frugality, goofy though it may sound at times, makes it all the sweeter.