Ice Cream
Posted by Lynsie Watkins Thu, 14 Sep 2006 03:35:00 GMT
One year ago, in June of 2005, I was struck with an idea. Having cooked quite avidly for my family of six for many years, and having returned from my sejour in Paris long enough to have realized its infections upon me, I began to find ways to feed the souls of those around me by first feeding their bellies. Through this release, I discovered how significant a connection I was forging by using my own two hands to create a meal. It was my two hands that felt, prodded, and squeezed the fruit at the market. It was my two hands who paid the price to make this food mine. And finally, it was with my two hands that I prepared this food into something filled with flavor and love. Upon stumbling across this incredible delight, I asked myself-what could be better than doing this all the time?
To create food through love for the sake of nourishment: what a gift. To see the delight spread across the faces of those I fed? This affected me in a way far deeper than I could ever explain. My heart was touched. But the question was this: why were people so happy? What about eating the creation of another brought such satisfaction? A work of art, one could argue, may have the same affect. But still in all my ponderings, I have yet to find such a creation that nourishes the soul both physically and emotionally. This may bring to mind a certain literary term: magical realism. Books use it, movies portray it, I live it, and therefore, so do those who eat my food.
One day in mid-June, I stumbled across a seemingly very old recipe for ice-cream. Being that my three brothers LOVE ice-cream, I decided to try my hand at making a batch. To my surprise, it worked beautifully. From there, I began hearing requests-and incredibly, the whole family was as excited as I was about this new endeavor! I heard vanilla, chocolate banana, cotton candy, and peach cobbler! Blueberry cheesecake, chocolate icing, and peaches and cream. I started experimenting with flavors. And what's more, I started handing out samples to neighbors and friends, as well as taking more and more requests. I began to realize probably one of the most valuable and significant lessons of my life. People not only love ice cream, they love what it symbolizes: family, childhood, celebration, friends, joy. And what's more, given the chance to create their own perfect flavor, the grin spreads wider than before imagined, the heart opens its wings to new reason for love, life, and ceremony. To be able to bring this joy to the lives of people around me, known and unknown, was what I never knew I always needed and wanted. I had found my calling.
With that, I started my fledgling company: Home Ice Cream Company, later known officially as Home Catering Company. With the help of my friends and family, I began taking orders, creating inventive concoctions, and delivering the finished pint of ice-cream personally to those in my community. I went from sampling out my ice-cream at a neighborhood garage sale to catering alumnae events for my alma mater, Sweet Briar College. However, more rapidly than ever expected, or maybe I have my naivete to blame, more orders came in than I could handle. My business sense was not extremely impressive, and I therefore had to leave my business temporarily, putting it on hold until I could garner the skills, equipment, and knowledge necessary to run it properly, the way I wanted. I wanted fresh ingredients, I wanted proper tools, and most importantly, I wanted to provide a product for my clients that held 100% true to my original reasonings for starting this process in the beginning: this was about the food and the people. The result was special, personal, and most of all, nourishing to the mind and body. How could I run a business that would not lose sight of these principals? It had to be built slowly, surely, securely, carefully. My business would not resurface as a live entity until exactly one year later.
On July 27th, one day after my birthday, I moved from Northern Virginia to Charlottesville, Virginia. Still holding quite tightly to my want to form my business and give it wings, I had to sacrifice its onset for a job that would pay steadily and give me the precocious security I needed to live, for the first time, completely on my own. I took two jobs, with babysitting in the evenings on the side. I quickly found myself working 56 hour work weeks, at the very least, in an attempt to just live within my means. At one point, admittedly not my favorite part of the story, I was using change to buy chicken soup at the store, anxiously awaiting my first pay check. I paid for gas $5 at a time, and learned to make my ¼ tank of gas stretch for at least a week at a time. I would walk to the grocery store, 1.5 miles away and buy a box of special K and a gallon of milk, which I made last for a week. It was hard, but not horrible. It was my rite of passage, some have it easier, some not as easy. I didn't complain, I just waited patiently, with my business idea still swimming strongly around in my head.
Once the pay checks started coming in, I began to feel more confident. I began to talk about my idea with others, more so to receive encouragement than to market. I was still unsure if people down here would have the same response as those from my home town. But people seemed to love the idea, so I pushed forward. While my means for making and transporting the ice cream that I made were non-existent, I still experimented for friends willing to come visit me in order to experience their created flavors. On top of this, I made French pastries, cakes, and desserts for apt clients anxious to try my inspirations from Paris. I went on like this, with hope in my heart and faith in my soul-I knew my plan would come to fruition in its own time. However bills, food, and gas began to take precedence to business plans and marketing campaigns.
I was a college graduate, I could find a higher paying job, but I wanted to remain where I was: in touch with real people, creating food and being surrounded by self-proclaimed “foodies” was where I belonged, so I stayed and decided to struggle. From a coffee shop to a kitchen retail store to a bakery I went, building invaluable skills, those whose weight I realize only now: their utter significance in this serendipitous life I now lead.