Big Red Ice Cream

With it so hot outside, my mouth waters at the thought of making homemade ice cream. My favorite is BIG RED......A lot of people have never heard of it....It is definitely a purely Texas invention, as the home of Big Red soda water is right here in Waco...Some folks, especially those from up North, call a soft drink a "soda pop", or just a "pop"....We always called it a "soda water".....maybe because it fizzed?.... Also, Woolworth's and old-time drug stores had all those "soda" fountains....

It is so easy to make BIG RED ice cream.....In the freezer container, mix together two cans of sweetened condensed milk (Eagle Brand or any cheaper brand will do) and one two-liter bottle of BIG RED soda water, then freeze..........You can also use five 12-ounce cans of BIG  RED....just so you have 60 ounces of it.....One reminder:  Do NOT use DIET BIG RED, as it will foam all over everything.....Oh, yes, be sure someone gets to lick the condensed milk cans, just don't cut your tongue!

 The electric ice cream freezer that I had bought brand new in 1985, just after moving back to Waco from Normangee and Hilltop Lakes, where my three kids grew up,  finally bit the dust...It was "Made in America" and lasted twenty years. I had given it to my youngest son, Bobby, and his wife, Spring, as I did not need to be making a half gallon of anything that I love so much, just for me to eat all by myself!.....I did salvage the wooden bucket to use as a flower pot at the back steps....It reminds me of good memories every time I see it...

..One either loves BIG RED right off the bat or does not....Most people acquire a taste for it, once they realize it is the only flavor going to be made by our bunch!  It is VERY rich, but, oh, so VERY good.....First tasted it at a church picnic in Speegeleville in 1966....made by our dear friends, Frances and Dalton Stewart.....I had to have the recipe..

.It is a tradition in our family to have BIG RED ice cream and my "wedding cake" white cake for  birthdays, if at all possible, even if your birthday is in the cold winter months! And it is definitely one of the most pleasurable ways to cool off  in the summer heat that one can imagine!