Vegan Blackberry Ice Cream

Vegan Blackberry Ice Cream

Yes! Finally an ice cream recipe that doesn't require an ice cream maker. My only problem now is where on earth (ie. in Jamaica) am I going to find blackberries and a vanilla pod. I wonder if my mother would know where to find vanilla, because I do recall many years ago when she worked in the food department of the Bureau of Standards and was responsible for the standards of food in the country, somehow she had obtained some pods of vanilla and took them home to show me that vanilla wasn't just a fragrance and that it actually came from somewhere plant like. As for blackberries even if I can find them I don't know what kind of quality they would be.

I just spoke to my mother on the phone and now she wants to know why am I giving her all this trouble to find these random ingredients. She was helpful enough to tell me that vanilla comes from an orchid and that an old aunt (Aunt Joyce) who used to live nearby the country house used to have several of these orchids on her mango tree. Fortunately my parents are friends/acquaintances of the new tenants and so I told Mummy to call her up say "hi" and then ask her if we can raid them. Then she told me I should drive to Westmorland (a parish in Jamaica) because they grow wild there. As for the blackberries, she doesn't know of them being in Jamaica.

I thought about it and think that possibly raspberries could be substituted for blackberries and I know that raspberries do grow (however scarcely or scantily) in Jamaica. When I was much younger there was another old aunt (Aunt Goldie- now deceased) who used to live in the country and on occasion we would go and visit her. She used to have a raspberry shrub on her property and whether it was wild or cultivated I don't know. This sadly is probably the only memory I have of her or her property as the case maybe. And to this day my younger brother only remembers her as, "the lady where we picked the raspberries".