from the editor

A grill and crank evening

A few years ago, a Saturday night in August might have found my family participating in a communal rite of summer. It’s a ritual that, from time to time, I force upon my own children today. One might call it the grill and crankevening.

My father would grill chicken, with my mother standing by to ensure it was routinely covered with a barbecue sauce that transformed the meat into a steaming treat with a sweet, crunchy red-brown coating.

We’d also have fresh corn on the cob, a salad and, afterward, homemade ice cream.

Hand-cranked. My parents, I think, found it amusing that we took such pleasure in a process that was so unnecessary. Ice cream at home that we made ourselves! It was at once a primal and communal experience.

And somehow with sweet strawberries and cream churning over the paddles, the taste seemed all the better.

The recipe is generally simple: sugar, heavy cream or half- and-half, perhaps eggs, fruit and other mix-ins. The ingredients and paddles go in one bucket, which rests in a larger bucket filled with ice and salt to lower the temperature. From then on, crank. Make that cranking and cranking, so the inner bucket turns and the ingredients freeze.

Anyone who has done it remembers.

But likely not so much the cranking as the time itself. Cranking, along with the helper task of holding the ice cream maker still, results in enforced shared time.

It is those moments with loved ones and good friends talking in the quiet of a summer night that I remember most: my childhood friends Eddie and Brannon, my parents and sisters, and family-friend Butch, who sometime later was killed in a night landing on an aircraft carrier.

We shared stories and smiles all while anticipating the rich sweetness of homemade in a time of mass-marketed, factory- produced products.

So the heat is here. The summer stretches before us as yet unbowed by the advancing calendar. It’s time to dust off the ice cream maker because, after all, it makes more than ice cream.

In this issue: the people behind the projects that continue make this a great place to live – Citizens Business Bank Arena, The Shoppes at Chino Hills, Claremont’s Old School House and the future Guasti project.

Gino L. Filippi offers great wineries to visit in Temecula; more ideas for summer fun; a parents’ guide to sending a child to college and much more. Cheers!

Don Sproul don@inlandlivingmagazine.com (909) 386-3899