I scream, you scream, we all scream for (simple) ice cream!

A couple of weeks ago, my family spent the week in Minnesota with my childhood friend and her family. My friend is the antithesis of a helicopter mom, and this worked out fantastically for my family. We were in the perfect spot for some freedom finding, and while it may not have been the smartest idea to let four children aged 9 - 11 figure out how to relight a fire that had not been put out properly by some teens the night before, wow did they have fun. And, in our defense, we were not that far away when this mission was going down, and they were right by the lake and it was pretty wet - so odds were there wasn't going to be anything randomly lightly ablaze outside the fire ring.

Besides letting her children run wild with my children, my friend has also mastered the art of "just do it" parenting. Want a grilled cheese? She'd answer a few questions, and then her kid would make a grilled cheese sandwich. They're not at all intimidated by the stovetop, and failure is just part of learning. That's all kind of a side bar (and a reminder that I'd like to eventually post about this trip) to the real point - I want my kids to be more independent in the kitchen.

In pursuit of kitchen independence, I've been letting the kids make boxed mixes of cookies. And though a little part of me dies at not carefully measuring high quality vanilla into a bowl of other high quality ingredients - they're learning to cook - and that's good.

Helen moved onto ice cream a few days ago. In the name of simplification, I took Eagle Brand Sweetened Condensed Milk up on their offer of a free can of their product, went to their website and found a recipe for vanilla ice cream and voila - ice cream ready to be frozen in less than 10 minutes - all created by Helen.

Combine the three ingredients and either put in the freezer like the recipe recommends or do what we did, and stick it in the ice cream maker.

• 4 cup (2 pts.) half-and-half or light cream
• 1 (14 oz.) can Eagle Brand® Sweetened Condensed Milk
• 2 tablespoon vanilla extract

The ice cream tastes about as close to Dairy Queen's vanilla as I've ever had. And because I am from Kansas, I love DQ (we don't really have it out here, a pity).

Easy and delicious! And I see more in our future!

Elaine