How To Make Ice Cream In A Bag

Have you ever made ice cream in a bag before, I haven’t in years and the kids never have so we knew we had to put it on our “Old School” Summer Bucket List! Ice cream in a bag was just as much fun to make (and eat!) as we hoped it would be! Mix together the half and half, sugar, and vanilla in the quart size bag and seal it well. Then put the quart size bag inside the gallon bag and fill it with ice. Pour about the ice cream salt on top of the ice and seal the gallon bag. It didn’t take long for the ice cream to start to solidify but the bags got really, really cold! We wore gloves to help keep our hands warm. Once it gets to be the consistency of soft serve ice cream and feels thick through the bag then it is ready to eat! Once ours was ready we grabbed spoons and ate the ice cream right out of the bag!

It’s socially acceptable to go up to someone in a bar if you’re chatting them up but we worry that if we’re looking for a friend date, we might come across as strange. Weber explained that forming friendships isn’t always easy and that understanding this and persevering anyway is a crucial part of the friendship-making process. ‘Be open to meeting new people but at the same time, don’t expect too much. These things don’t happen overnight… it’s completely okay to find it difficult and realising this helps with the challenge itself. As an impatient person, waiting for friendships to happen was not easy. But Weber was right.

‘Showing a bit of vulnerability can be really helpful for making friends,’ revealed Weber. This might mean fumbling over our words, saying something that makes no sense, opening up about an emotional difficulty. It can take a lot of different formats. ‘I think that vulnerability is a really big part of connecting, especially for women. Women can be very empathic and interested in looking after each other - there is a real nurturing quality to many female friendships. But vulnerability can also be a shared sense of camaraderie as well. When I took Weber’s expert advice on this, people really did respond positively to me showing a little bit of weakness. That’s not to say that I entered every room on a negative note but allowing myself to be more vulnerable actually ended up winning me some popularity points.

Telling the woman next to me that I was uncoordinated in a trampolining class meant she confided in me that she was the exact same. We had something in common and laughed our way through our uncoordinated bounces. The next time we bumped into each other we remembered that connection and nattered away with ease. Curiosity might have killed the cat but according to Weber, it may also have kindled the friendship. ‘Curiosity is a huge ingredient for connecting. Wanting to find out about another person, wanting to open up your world and showing that you don’t already know everything you need to know is a great recipe for kindling a friendship,’ the psychologist explained.



As we all well know, it can be pretty tough engaging with people when they don’t ask any questions. But Weber explains that it goes beyond this. When we show an interest in other people and we’re curious about them we’re more likely to find out the things we have in common. ‘It doesn’t have to be concrete things like favourite pastimes although that obviously can happen. But just do enough research conversationally to connect and relate on some level. That could also mean offering up your own stories or finding some common ground. Organising to meet up with another friend of a friend, I was nervous.