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Margaret Hochla
El Reno, Oklahoma
I have been married for 27 years to Victor and have 4 children. The two girls and two boys range in age from 25-10 years. We are pleased to still have one grandparent from each side of the family ... More about Margaret
Sareen Dunleavy-Keenan
Minneapolis, Minnesota
I live in Minneapolis, in 1.5 story craftsman bungalow with beautiful woodwork, but a tiny lot. Sharing this space is my husband Brendan, 'baby' (5/07) and 'new baby' who is expected to join the fold in August. More about Sareen
Gina Keenan-Klages
Eau Claire, Wisconsin
My name is Gina, and my husband's name is Patrick. We have three children, ranging in ages from 1 to 5 years. Our household also includes my mother, who is living with us from September to May. More about Gina
Donna McClurkan
Kalamazoo, Michigan
Early January may seem an inauspicious time to begin an "eat local" project in Southwest Michigan. As if to underscore that point, nearly a foot of snow fell in Kalamazoo on January 3. More about Donna
Cher Stuewe-Portnoff
St Louis, Missouri
My first father-in-law taught me to garden in the mid-1960s. Over the next few years, with a family of five to feed, I read everything I could find about nutrition ... More about Cher
Vera Schabicki
Ashland, Mississippi
Four years ago my five children, one husband, two dogs, one cat and I moved to the rural South from a large northern California city. We went from .12 acres to a rambling 57 acres. More about Vera
- oh yeah
- Love
- successes and failures
- Hurrah for (kind of) local juice!
- Wow, it has gone fast!
- You must be brave
- Perhaps to give you some insight
- Finale: The Meaning of Life
- Meeting Joel Salatin ... and other posts from the cutting room floor
- The snack that does what?
< Friendship takes up the challenge | Main | At last! Local tomatoes! >
Dessert - local and cheap!
Posted at 1:35 PM on February 12, 2008 by Sareen Dunleavy Keenan
Nothing says summer like a root beer float. Apparently, for the Keenan family, why wait for the sun? This past weekend we made root beer floats. For most, this means unscrewing the 2 liter of your favorite soda label and dishing out a bit of ice cream from the gallon sized pail.
That just isn't how we do it in our house. First, the root beer needed to be made. That involved an extract from Washington picked up at the local home brew store . Then we used 5 pounds of local sugar, and some fine fine Minneapolis H20. A bit of boiling and through the magic of carbonation, we had 5 gallons of root beer on tap. This is huge, because the 5 gallons cost about the price of one four pack of root beer made with cane sugar. You see, in addition to wanting to eat local, I am also known to be frugal!
Then came the ice cream. Aside from the vanilla, we went totally local on this too! We cranked up the new ice cream maker attachment for the Kitchenaid and went to work. Various dairy products were added from Cedar Summit Farms and voila!
I know all of this seems like it might take a while, but really, it is just a process of a little boil here, a little freeze here and you have yourself the best root beer float you have ever had. Seriously.