As promised yesterday:

The Snack Shack at the High School Summer Camp I attended many years ago served peppermint ice cream. Every summer, I consumed as many peppermint milkshakes as I could afford. (I could never afford enough.) Other campers followed trends, like the summer everyone got hooked on raw cookie dough, until some counselor’s fears of salmonella spurred a cutoff in the cookie dough supply lines (the grocery store for local residents).

No withdrawals for me, though, at least until I got home. Peppermint shakes, 24/7!

Those milkshakes set the bar. No other peppermint would suffice, and over the years I tried everything short of driving to Sequoia National Forest mid-June to see if they still existed. (By the way, adding peppermint extract to a vanilla milkshake does not work. Thelma at the Fountain in Mount Hermon allowed me to experiment that theory to it’s sad conclusion.)

McConnell’s ice cream served as a reliable substitute for a while, but peppermint used to only be a seasonal flavor in grocery stores (summer for ice cream, but winter for creamer; what’s up with that?), and McConnell’s is too classy to dye their ice cream the pink color my Pavlovian Milkshake Conditioning (P.M.C.) demands.

Solution? Make my own. After years of experiments, I’m finally satisfied. (It’s a lot like adding peppermint extract to vanilla ice cream; plus, food dye. More professional than that, but about the same result…)

I promised myself this wouldn’t become a cooking blog. There will be recipes, but only as they relate more directly with national parks & camping. (I could call this “Panamint Ice Cream” after Death Valley, but that’s cheating, right?)

So, no recipe today. However, if you too suffer from P.M.C. and/or want the recipe, let me know. I’m happy to share!