Coconut Melon Mint Ice Cream

This post was sponsored by Sprouts. Thank you for supporting the partnerships that allow Brewing Happiness to grow and exist. xoxo.

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Coconut Melon Mint Ice Cream

This churn-free Coconut Melon Mint Ice Cream is the perfect dairy-free (and refined sugar free) treat for those hot summer days!

Course Dessert, Sweet Thangs

Cuisine American

Prep Time 12 hours

Cook Time 6 hours

Total Time 18 hours

Author Brewing Happiness

Ingredients

• 2 cans Sprouts Brand full fat coconut milk, refrigerated overnight
• 1 ½ cups Santa Claus melon, cubed (sub honeydew)**
• ¼ cup Sprouts Brand coconut sugar
• 3 Tbsp. Sprouts Brand coconut oil, melted
• 7-10 Sprouts Brand mint leaves

Instructions

1. Open your refrigerated cans of coconut milk, scoop the solid white part into a blender and discard the clear liquid.
2. Add all other ingredients to the blender. Blend on high speed until smooth and pale green. This may take a few minutes, in the beginning the coconut oil will separate from the coconut milk, but if you keep blending until the mixture is slightly warm it will unify.
3. Pour your mixture into a bowl and freeze for 4-6 hours, taking it out of the freezer every hour to stir. I suggest using a standing mixer or hand mixers to mix the ice cream once it really starts to harden. This adds air to it and helps is become creamy.
4. After 4-6 hours and your ice cream has reached it’s desired consistency, scoop it into ice cream cones or straight into your mouth. You can store the remainder in an airtight container in the freezer for a week or so.
5. EAT UP.

Recipe Notes

* Recipe adapted from Minimalist Baker's Vanilla Bean Coconut Ice Cream.
** Sprouts has an incredible array of unique melons, and the Santa Claus melon is one of my favorites. It's sorta like a honeydew except a little less sweet and the outside is much darker. (See GIF below.)

You buy a bottle of wine and a carton of ice cream, it’s the classic heartbreak troupe. That’s how you deal with your sadness. You either wallow in it by watching something sad while digging into your ice cream, or you repress the sadness by replacing feelings with food. Ice cream can be a sort of therapy. It can calm the aching heart. It can please the senses. It can remind us that there still is good in the world. But even yet, there is a kind of pain – a kind of sadness – that ice cream can’t fix.

I come from a family of therapists. My sister is a therapist who specializes in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and my mother specializes in Christian counseling. The first time I was made to go to therapy I was in elementary school. The school counselor would pull me out of class, walk me down the hall, and try to talk to me about my family. I hated it. I became pretty weary of therapy for most of my adolescence. I felt like there was enough of it at home, I didn’t need to seek it out.

But then college happened. And LA happened. And I was in the middle of my first real relationship and struggling with my life path. It was all too much for me. And the familiar voice of my mother came to me, “You could try seeing someone.” I was so worn down and in need of help that I thought, okay I’ll do it. But if I was gonna do therapy, I was gonna do it on my own terms. So I looked for someone young. I looked for someone with a background in the arts. And I looked for someone I could afford.

I found Stephanie. In our first session I sat down and said, “Look, I come from a family of therapists so I don’t wanna hear about how my relationship issues come from my dad or whatever.” She laughed and wrote something down and said she understood. “No dad shit,” she said. And I knew we were off to a great start.

I saw Stephanie for about two years. She helped me navigate the end of my first real relationship. She helped me leave behind acting for something new (aka. this blog). And she taught me one of the most important questions of my whole life : why do you have to know? 

Even still, I hardly was able to talk to her about my disordered eating (read more about that here and here). I just wasn’t ready. I was still in the “this isn’t that bad”/ “eat away your problems”/ “other people have it worse” phase. I wasn’t ready to admit that there was a problem that needed to be solved.

This relationship with Stephanie laid the groundwork for me to be able to seek out help years later when I was finally ready to face my body image and disordered eating. I went to body image workshops and therapists and read self help books and intensive therapy retreats and opened myself up to anyone and everyone who would help make my load a little lighter. I can confidently say it is the only reason I healed from it all.

Sometimes there are issues too big for us to battle on our own. Too heavy for us to carry. I am lucky that I came from a family that encouraged and promoted therapy as a healthy and normal means for coping with life. I know that most people are not that lucky. So I am hoping that my story and my honesty might help normalize therapy in a small way.

There are just some issues that Coconut Melon Mint Ice Cream can’t fix. (Although it might still help.) If you are struggling with something that feels to big and heavy for you to carry, or even if life just feels confusing, I hope you at least consider finding a therapist. Mental health is so important. It’s worth the risk. It’s worth asking for help.

Sadly, not all therapists are Stephanie. They aren’t all a perfect fit, you may have to try many. You may not be ready to try. And that’s okay. But when you are ready, or if you think you *might* be, just do it. I can’t recommend it enough. Mental health is just as important (or even more so) as eating well for your body. So just as earnestly as I’d recommend for you to eat health-ier and find what “health” means to you, I’d also recommend for you to take care of your mind and your heart. You deserve that kind of life. xoxo