All right, I know a lot of people do not want their kids to eat the things we did as children. Mouthfuls of turf, raindrops on our tongues, and does anyone remember that book, "How to Eat Fried Worms" (Thomas Rockwell; Random House, 1973)?

And yes, I know, I know, acid rain, air pollution and who knows what else is in our environment these days, but I really have had a hankering to make snow ice cream this weekend what with the blizzard and all. I remember bundling up in snow pants, boots, scarves, and mittens, taking my grandmother's large yellow Tupperware bowl out into the front yard and heaping it full of white fluffy flakes which my aunts would later transform into cool, crisp, homemade vanilla ice cream.

I looked online to find some variations on how to do this, and popular cooking sites like allrecipes.com, cooks.com and The Food Network, along with hundreds of other hits for how to make snow ice cream appeared. If you want to surf the Internet for recipes, Google will give you 10 pages of hits, all which feature variations on the following:

Mix together 1-2 cups of milk with 1 tsp. of sweetener (sugar, molasses, maple syrup, honey, etc., or substitute sweetened condensed milk for the milk) and 1 tsp. of vanilla (or to taste). Slowly stir in 1 gallon of CLEAN snow. Eat. It doesn't get anymore natural than this.