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“It’s the good stuff. The key to making the best ice cream is to start with the best ingredients. I’m thinking of making a maple ice cream with candied bacon and toasted walnuts.”
Joselyn’s stomach growled audibly. “Obviously it’s more than just my taste buds that like the sound of that— my stomach wants it too.”
“If you’re hungry, I can make you some real food.”
She shook her head. “Nah. Ice cream is good.”
Marcus laughed loudly. “I see you still have your ability to live off sugar alone.” He cracked half a dozen eggs, separated the yolks from the whites, and put the yolks in a saucepan. He poured as much maple syrup as he guessed it would take into a measuring cup and then wrote down how much he was putting in. He had come up with enough new recipes to know to keep track well. He whisked the eggs and maple syrup together, then turned the heat on to medium. He measured half and half and heavy cream, recording the amounts and adding them to the mix. “Remember when you, me, Kennon, and Everett ran away from home?”
“I remember. You three were probably... what? Ten? So I was probably eight.”
“That sounds about right. I came over to play, but Everett said that they couldn’t because both he and Kennon were grounded until their room was clean. But Kennon said it wasn’t fair for him to be grounded since it was all Everett’s stuff, and Everett said he had too much stuff, so trying to tackle it all was too overwhelming.”
“I believe the phrase he used,” Joselyn said, “was ‘cruel and unusual punishment.’”
Marcus chuckled. “I had completely forgotten that. I do remember that it was Everett who suggested that the best solution was to run away from home.” He kept whisking the mix as it cooked, emulsifying the fats in the cream.
“I remember wanting in on the adventure,” Joselyn said, “and you guys weren’t going to let me until you realized that you’d need food if you ran away. My mom was in the kitchen making dinner, and I was the only one of us who could go get food without arousing suspicion.”
“Because your room was already squeaky clean, like usual.” He rarely went into her room, but he remembered walking by it plenty of times and always marveling that another kid’s room could be so pristine.
“Which was a good thing, because you three never would’ve survived without food.”
Marcus laughed long and loud. “When we got to the spot in the mountains where we decided we were going to live and you opened up the pack you brought of food, the only items it contained were four Twinkies and an unopened two-pound bag of brown sugar.”
“And four plastic spoons.”
“I don’t think you can call that ‘food.’”
“I don’t know— you all thought I was the most brilliant kid who ever lived when I first opened that pack.”
He nodded. “Not so much after we ate it all, though. It was a good thing that you have sugar immunity or we wouldn’t have had someone to go for help.”
This time, Joselyn laughed, and the sound was like sunshine itself. Marcus concentrated on his whisking so he wouldn’t dwell on the sound of it so much. The mixture was starting to look right, so he dipped a spoon in it. When it coated the spoon, he ran his finger along the back of it. It left a clean line.
“Perfect.” He removed it from the heat, strained the mix into a bowl, and then added sea salt.
As he was pouring the mix into the ice cream maker, Joselyn said, “Have you decided on any other flavors yet? Or how many flavors you’re going to carry? Or if you’re going to have a rotating flavor or a flavor of the month?”
“Ooo. I like the idea of a flavor of the month,” he said, closing the top of the machine and heading to the sink to clean the bowl. He liked to experiment and try new things, but he couldn’t do that nearly enough at this restaurant. The owners wouldn’t change the menu more than twice a year, and they didn’t like the concept of a nightly special or offering anything else not on the menu.
As he was placing bacon on a tray and putting it into an oven, toasting walnuts, taking the bacon out when it was almost done, draining the fat, coating it in maple syrup, then returning it to the oven to caramelize, he and Joselyn talked about flavors. Together they brainstormed, and he mentioned all the flavors he had either made already or thought of making over the past few weeks. Buttered popcorn, lemonade, lavender rose, cinnamon oatmeal cookie, key lime, potato chip and pretzel, olive oil. He pulled the caramelized bacon out of the oven and set the tray on the rack to cool.
“Oh!” Joselyn said. “You should make a Dr. Pepper one. Macie would go crazy for it.”
“Add it to the list.”
“And maybe something specific to Nestled Hollow. Like,” Joselyn looked up at the ceiling, tapping her pen on her lips, which only brought Marcus’s attention to them. He imagined for a full three seconds how it would feel to kiss those lips before he caught himself and stopped. “Nestled Hollow Heaven. Something like that.”
“Good idea.” Getting the thought of her lips out of his head was a little more difficult than he thought it would be. His mind scrambled for a flavor he could bring up. “I made a sea salt and honey ice cream once. It was so good I was thinking of giving up real food and only eating it.”
“Wow— good enough to make a talented chef give up real food? That flavor’s definitely going on the list,” she said. Her pen was poised over the page in her notebook, but she hesitated, a grin spreading across her face. “You should name that flavor ‘By the sea salt, honey darling.’”
Marcus laughed from deep within his belly. “Done.” That flavor was going to forever remind him of Joselyn. If he could only have one flavor of ice cream for the rest of his life, it would be that one, so it seemed fitting.
Now that the caramelized bacon had time to cool, he grabbed a bowl and started breaking it into chunks.
“Marcus. Remember how we were talking about branding? What do you think about giving all of your flavors names like that?”
