“Elizabeth Kelsey is the first to admit that she’s a little nuts about fruit.This is my obsession, my baby, she says about the fruit-based ice cream she sells from her tiny store-front on Bjune Drive below Eagle Harbor Books, next to Lindsley’s and Bainbridge Auto Parts.Kelsey’s All-Natural Ice Cream, as the store is called, is a misnomer. There’s no cream or any other dairy product involved. Only organically grown fruit. A machine licensed to Kelsey purees frozen fruit at roughly 32,000 rpm, creating a consistency similar to ice cream.Although Kelsey won’t show the machine to visitors, saying I’ve got 15 years invested in this, she says you can’t duplicate her result by simply souping up your blender.The real secret, she says, lies in the way the various fruits are prepared, something that took her two years to learn at a Swiss culinary school.I learned how to handle fruit, she said. You have to understand the genetic thing of each fruit, and treat it accordingly. If you don’t prepare the fruit right, it won’t come out of the machine the way its supposed to.The Bainbridge native, who once raced cars professionally, stumbled onto the frozen-fruit concoction years ago while visiting Sweden with her brother to compete in a triathlon.We stopped at a corner and saw a long line of people waiting in front of a small stand, where a woman was jamming fruit through a machine, she said. The woman came out from behind the stand, pointed to some people standing behind us, and said, ‘You’re the last one who’s going to get ice cream frosties today.’ We were getting ready to run triathlons, and these made us feel terrific.Kelsey tried to find a similar product elsewhere, and tried to duplicate the results herself, but without success. On later trips to Sweden, she got to know the woman she had seen on the first trip.Ultimately, she purchased one of the processing machines, together with an exclusive license for the United States. Then she began her own experimenting at home.I did years of R and D at home, learning how to process the fruit, she said. My goal was always to open a store.The store is little more than a counter. A menu hangs on the wall by the door, printed in reverse so that it can be read in the mirror behind the case displaying hand-dipped chocolates, made by islander Toni Petti. A freezer case displays bags of fruit that, upon order, are taken into the back room and processed through the machine, either singly or in combination.Kelsey and a small crew of area girls, led by Lindsey Henken, run the store. The store’s small space belies the complexity of the operation, Kelsey said. She said that each of the several fruits she uses – berries, peaches, bananas, mangoes, and so forth – require multiple processing steps. In fact, Kelsey said she has some 75 people working on the processing. The fruits then go to six different storage points on the island and in Silverdale, and the bagged fruit is then brought to the store each day.Assembling her crew and putting together the operation took over six months, Kelsey said. She tended to that while managing the family-owned investment company, Kelsey & Associates, that provided her with living expenses and seed money while she got the operation under way.Business has been great during the first month of operation, she said. It’s mostly been word of mouth, Kelsey said. Moms bring their kids in from the (Waterfront) park. People come in the store and say, ‘I was told to come in here, but I don’t know why.’The appeal, Kelsey said, is the combination of good-tasting fun food and good nutritional value.The idea here is to enjoy life, but to feel good about it, she said.Even though Kelsey has exclusive U.S. rights to the machine, she has no plans to franchise her operation, or open multiple stores.Maybe someday I’ll move across Winslow Way or something like that, she said, but we’re not going anywhere. This is here for the local people.”