Ice Cube Variety

When I was a kid ice cubes at home had to be a pre-planned item. We took the aluminum ice cube tray and filled it with water and placed the divider with the handle in the tray and carefully walked it over to the top freezer where we carefully slid it in between the little boxes of frozen peas and the Stouffer’s Spinach soufflé hoping not to slosh more water out of the tray than we kept in.

It was a real test of childhood strength to be able to pull the handle up on the frozen cubes and be able to release some of them to put into our kool aid.

The worst sin you could commit was putting an empty tray back in the freezer since we only had two. Similarly to leaving two squares of toilet paper on the roll and not replacing it, you could get in real trouble for leaving one cube and not refilling the tray with water.

If you wanted crushed ice at home we had a wall mounted ice crusher in our upstairs kitchen. It had a metal funnel with teeth inside it on the top and a red plastic cup screwed on to the bottom, and a handle. You put the cubes in the funnel and closed the lid. Cranking the handle the ice inside the funnel would be crushed by the big metal claws inside depositing small enough shards to fall through the teeth. It was a lot of work to get crushed ice, but boy was it a big treat.

Then the 70’s came and we got an ice maker in our refrigerator. There was a love hate relationship with that ice maker as sometimes our ice tasted oniony. We never solved that mystery.

Carter is back in the sixties as she has a freezer, but no ice maker. She let me know that she only has one ice cube tray as we threw away all her old trays this summer when we returned her to Boston to discover he refrigerator had broken while she was home.

When I went to look on Amazon for ice cube trays I was accosted by the hundreds of different choices for ice cube trays. You can get ones that make big giant cubes for cocktails. You can get octagon shaped cubes and you can get mini cubes that are as close to crushed ices as you can make without the wall mounted machine.

I decided to get her the mini trays. There is no one for her to blame if the trays are not filled so I don’t think she will have that problem. I am certain that a fridge with an ice maker is a life goal for Carter.