Ice Cream!

Saturday, June 27^th is National Ice Cream Cake Day. I have no idea why, but just the same, let’s roll with it. Except the cake can wait for another installment.  I have met very few people who don’t like ice cream. I even know people that are lactose intolerant who like ice cream. Now I realize it says Ice Cream Cake Day, but I’m only really hearing ice cream at the moment. My favorite flavor? Ya, whatever is available in the freezer at the time. I have serious issues at Baskin Robins or Cold Stone. I end up doing the “Eeny meeny miny mo” thing. Moose tracks is the current option. So me being me, I had to look up where it came from.

According to the Museum of Ice Cream (https://www.museumoficecream.com/blog/history-of-ice-cream/) ice cream has been invented several times. In 400 BC the Persians were eating something called faloodeh, a kind of an ice dessert. In 200 BC the Chinese mixed frozen milk and rice. In India they made kulfi, a slow-frozen milk dessert containing pistachio, saffron, and cardamom. In the Middle East people made sharbat, which is fruit syrups chilled with ice. It’s where we get our words sherbet and sorbet. These all happened independently of each other. Hey, people like their frozen dessert!

Up until the mid-1800’s ice cream as we know it was a luxury, reserved for only the well-to-do crowd. It was popularized in America by Thomas Jefferson who fell in love with it while visiting Europe. It is said that Washington spent a large amount of money just on ice cream.

It all changed when a lady named Nancy M. Johnson invented the hand-cranked ice cream machine in  1843. It swiftly moved ice cream into everyday homes. Add to that refrigeration, and ice cream parlors began springing up in neighborhoods across the nation.

Some of my favorite childhood memories are tied to warm summer evenings when my cousins would come from Missouri and we would have dinner in my grandparent’s yard. The adults would con the children into turning the crank on grandma’s old ice cream mixer for a small share in the product. It was soft serve at its best. I volunteered any time I could. Now they make ones with motors that do the mixing. Still nothing tastes quite like ice cream made with your own two hands. We can’t seem to get enough of it. Hand mixed, Soft serve, frozen yogurt, gelato, there seems to be a store on every corner.

Hmm, I think I’ll have a double scoop with rocky road and chocolate fudge – in a waffle cone please. Nuts on top? Oh, now that does sound lovely…