My first dip into ice cream making took place when I was sixteen. My parents ordered a fancy, Italian gelato maker, which arrived express mail, packed in multicolored styrofoam peanuts. The machine was shiny and new and bright-white all around. We placed it on its very own rolling butcher block cart and let it occupy a premier spot in the kitchen between the electric bread box and the convection toaster oven. That summer, we consumed nothing that hadn't been frozen and churned by that little machine, and every meal, from our banana-strawberry frozen yogurt breakfasts drinks to a midnight snack of butter brickle, was proof of our growing obsession.

In the beginning, we followed the recipes in the floppy pink booklet that accompanied the machine. Maple walnut was the easiest, just maple syrup, heavy cream, and toasted walnuts dropped into the bowl. Twenty minutes later emerged a beige-dappled ambrosia. We ate it directly from the machine.

Then, we got more adventurous, focusing in on sorbets, which were still a novelty in the early 80's. Red wine sorbet, lemon, papaya, banana-lime, black pepper-pear, apricot and honey, cassis, even gazpacho and garlic sorbet, although after those I think we all decided to stick to fruit. There was always a jar of simple syrup on the refrigerator door, standing ready for sweet service in a new ice.

It was no surprise to my family, then, when I decided to take a full-time high school internship working at Peter's Ice Cream Cafe, in Brooklyn Heights. I wanted to surpass my amateur glacier status and become a pro. However, as great as my expectations were my disappointments. This was the job that almost convinced me to go to law school. I quickly learned that making ice cream in quantities I could ski on was far, far different than futzing around with my parents fancy little gelato maker. Peter's ice cream machine was a sticky, dusty, cranky Goliath, all drab grey steel and forbidding. It looked as cold as the cream itself and broke down constantly. It leaked, and spluttered, and dripped, and coughed, and clogged. Worst of all were the dreaded decadent days, those days spent concocting Peter's signature flavor called chocolate decadence, as thick and muddy as fudge. In order to obtain the proper sludge-like consistency, pounds of cocoa powder had to be fed into the groaning machine through a tiny opening in the top. After digesting the addition, Goliath burped earth-colored clouds of cocoa, which produced a Los Angeles-like haze in the kitchen atmosphere. Cocoa dust settled on everything -- every nook and cranny of the whole room, and of course all over me. Each appliance, container, and surface in the kitchen had to be scrubbed off with a stiff brush and industrial soap. I had to go home and loofah. When leaving Peter s after a day of decadence, bees would buzz with me to the subway, swarming around my cocoa-coated perm.

It took me over a decade to recover from that job and regain an inclination to make ice cream again (although cocoa is still taboo). I have no fancy Italian gelato machine, no burping Goliath. What I do have is the most important part of the ice-cream making process, a freezer, and now, next to my ice cube trays there frequently sits a metal bowl filled with ivory orange blossom ice cream, or rich golden watermelon ice, or magenta blackberry granita, or, maybe, lemonade water ice...

The dormant seeds of obsession are easily awakened.