It’s Time to Discuss Ice Cream

And You Thought The Pizza Post Was a Disaster

Who likes, or wants to listen to, talk about food? Isn’t it bad manners to discuss the meal you are eating while you’re eating it? Those who want to reverse engineer an entree should know that the keys to most restaurant cooking are oil and salt. Let’s not discuss it. If you want my opinion of the meal while we are eating out, my response is often, “I could have done better myself.” You don’t want to hear that. I don’t want to think it.

But while I say I don’t like to talk about food, it is clear that Medium disagrees. The Goddess Algorithm (I call her “Mathematica Parthenos”) knows me better than I know myself. She serves me a steady diet of food stories both here and over at Apple News. Algorithm knows I am a lifelong fanboi of Corby Kummer, and reveals the disingenuousness of my antipathy toward food talk and writing.

I mean, I hate Guy Fieri, but I watch him.

Here is the awful truth. I don’t want to listen to OTHER PEOPLE talk about food. I hate discussions about pizza, hot dogs, and low grade meats because I’ve thought about each of those topics way too much and for far too long. My opinions on a topic like condiments could be measured in volumes. You don’t want to get me started.

But this is blogging, man. I love to read what “friends” on Medium write about food. I don’t hate read YOUR food stories. If you are on Medium, and I read you for whatever reason, then there is a connection between us, no matter how ephemeral, and that makes all the difference. There has been a lot written about bread in the history of the world. I think I even read James Beard’s “Beard on Bread”, but when I think about reading about bread I think about Lisa Renee’s:

Or, more to the point. This recent post of hers:

So, I’m going to subject you to my thoughts on ice cream for no other reason than to talk about ice cream. I’ll read what you have to say about salad or cupcakes… and I promise I won’t hate read… because we are just talking over the fence. These are the food stories of the creative underclass. We are in Provence. This is rustic Tuscan blogging. It may be a little rough, it may be simple, but it belongs to the people of Medium, the Mediumans, and for that reason may be interesting to us.

Food Memories

All of my “Boy Meets Food” posts are based on the idea that our most significant food memories come from childhood not because we ate better food when we were young but because taste buds mature during adolescence and then gradually decline throughout our lifetimes. In my case, I’ve been destroying my ability to taste with tobacco, sugar, alcohol, and Naptha for forty years.

To put it another way, if you could recreate the exact plate of corned beef hash Fred Nolstat served me at the end of a day of sailing when I was fourteen and served it to me today, I wouldn’t be able to taste it. It wouldn’t be memorable. Isn’t that sad?

Young people think that I stare at them in my creepy way just because of their healthy skin and hair. The truth is I am jealous of the whole youth package. When I look at the young I think “…that fucking kid has that incredible hair, knees like sponges, and he can taste his toast. He chooses to spend his time playing video games and drinking giant cans of Monster. Life is not fair.”

Just so you know, almost all of my internal dialogues end with “life is not fair.”

Ice Cream? This post was supposed to be about ice cream. It’s off to a very bad start. It’s already too long. I will break it into self-contained sections so you can skim more easily.

Best Ice Cream Evar

I am not a giant fan of ice cream. Most of my opinions about it are appropriated from the devotees I am close to. My wife, some of my cousins, and my friend Paul are dedicated ice cream eaters. When they say something about ice cream, I ingest their opinion like bacteriophage and make it my own.

On my own I couldn’t tell you where to get good ice cream. I have an answer because of them. It’s one that I triangulated between the Boss, Paul, and various guests who have visited and seem like they know what they are talking about. If you come to my house, I’ll say we should go to this place because it is the BEST ice cream, but that is really my cribbed-composite opinion.

I have a Normal Rockwell-esque ice cream memory that doesn’t end with the declaration “… and that was the greatest cone I ever ate.”

My grandfather had a farmhouse in rural New Hampshire that lacked electricity. When we would visit during the summer I did the things that olds say kids don’t do anymore. We played games of “make believe” in the junked cars stored in an ox barn. Using the platform of an empty wood shed as a stage we produced “plays” (if you call a ten minute set-up for a fart joke a “play”). We investigated the beaver lodge in the cranberry bog. I often got up early in the morning, sometimes to turn over leaves looking for salamanders and other times to try to shoot a woodchuck with a .22. We went swimming in ponds with no sand and lots of leeches. At night we played scrabble by kerosene lamp while the adults drank brown glasses of scotch.

Once when we were visiting my older cousin Edgar was put to the task of making ice cream for dinner. If you have ever made ice cream by hand crank you know that it is just a way for adults to occupy kids. It’s an activity that requires passing the ice cream maker around in a circle. Then each person in the circle cranks the handle until their arm falls off.

I remember making the ice cream but don’t remember eating it. It couldn’t have been that good.

The best ice cream I ever ate was from a street vendor in Moscow. It was a small amount of vanilla served with a teeny, tiny wooden spoon. I was about 17 years old. Since then, I have asked almost every Moscovite I meet about their ice cream. They often say things like the Russian ice cream is “very good” or “better”, but they don’t confirm what I experienced, which is that Russian ice cream is an order of magnitude better than what we can get in The States. There is, of course, an explanation to be found on the Internet.

The Good Humor Truck

I grew up in the suburbs of Hastings-on-Hudson. During the summers Good Humor ice cream trucks patrolled our streets. While it may seem strange to young readers that trucks wandered suburban streets looking for semi-ferral children, you have to remember that this was a time when our milk was delivered to our doorstep. We even had a “fruit man” who came to our street to sell produce from a big walk-in van. I guess the economics were different. There were a lot of kids and a lot of stay-at-home moms. When the Good Humor man parked at my end of the street I would guess that he routinely drew eight to ten kids out of the surrounding yards and houses.

The truck looked like this:

As much as I like that picture I have to include this one:

Because it includes the white uniform of the Good Humor man. That little change dispenser on the guy’s belt is a big part of the schtick. Good Humor ice cream was all about coins, as we’ll see in a second. Our Good Humor man did not wear the Nazi-esque shoulder strap, and he had a bigger belly. He was old, heavy and humorless. He let the ice cream do the selling. In retrospect I think that for a guy who spent his entire summer watching kids count change, he was pretty kind.

When you heard the bells, which in our neighborhood usually sounded between two and four, you immediately stopped whatever you were doing and sought change. There are only four sources of change:

• You have some change (that you found in the car, couch, or storm drain)
• You are going to ask a parent for change (the more specific the better. “Can I have a quarter?”)
• Your brother or friend has change
• You’re gonna steal some change

I admit sometimes there were bills. Bills, you may know, are just surrogates for change. Once you break a bill it turns into change, which can then be handed around and recounted.

I never had any change. My brothers never had any change. We spent the summer looking for change, but were seldom successful.

When the truck bells sounded, we we would start by asking mom for change. She often said, “no”. The “no” was final. An absolute “no”. There was little use in barking up that tree. You had to go to plan B.

If the Good Humor truck showed up after 4 PM you knew mom was going to say “no” and went straight to plan B. After 4 was too close to dinner. My mother believed that eating ice cream would ruin the chances you were going to eat the peas that YOU WERE NEVER GOING TO EAT ANYWAY.

If my mom said “OK”, that meant that my brothers and I would be given a quarter each. Now, take a look at this:

What on that Menu of Dissatisfaction can you get for a quarter? Not fucking much. Just the orange, raspberry, and lemon “fruit sticks”. I remember when the Push-Up was 25¢. I ate a lot of Push-Ups. I never liked Push-Ups. In fact, I hate Push-Ups and thinking about them again makes me bitter.

Let’s back up to plan B. Mom has said “no” and you have no change, so you are going to steal money. It’s a crime from the start because Mom said “no.” She knows you have no money. You’re going to have to sneak into your parent’s bedroom and take change from the top of your father’s dresser. Then you have to buy the ice cream without being seen, eat it in secret, and make sure you eat your dinner. Since little brothers are super snitches you have to buy the silence of any siblings that might witness your ice cream purchase by including them in the crime.

Here is a trivia question for the reader: What’s the maximum amount of “change” you can take before your father notices something is missing? Can you get away with a quarter and four dimes? That would buy you “chocolate eclair” that you “share” with your little brother? (BTW: If you want ice cream to taste better, have someone smaller than you watch you eat it while asking repeatedly for “another bite”).

If you said “yes” to that question (you can take 65¢ off the dresser), you are in for some Medieval parenting, dumbass. Who are you, Icarus? Settle for the Italian Ice and live to steal another day. They are easier to share, anyway. Nobody eats that gunk at the bottom of an Italian Ice… except little brothers, and he’ll be happy when you hand him the cup.

Post Script: I have spent my adult life eating a Good Humor ice cream every eight months to remind myself that the Chocolate Eclair, Toasted Almond, and Strawberry Shortcake bars completely and totally suck in their current incarnation and that, once again, there is “no going back”. I am glad that they don’t sell the Supreme “Fudge Cake” or “Chip Candy” any more because my memories of those treats remain unsullied by bad modern experiences which usually involve standing in a 7–11 parking lot, biting into a “Good Humor” ice cream and muttering, “This sucks. I need a fucking time machine.”

Creemee, Custard, Carvel

The origins of soft serve ice cream, like a lot of food history, are shrouded in mystery and dubious claims and counter-claims. It could be that the ancestors of Dairy Queen invented soft serve, but I prefer the idea that Tom Karvelas, a Greek-immigrant, invented soft-serve by selling melting ice cream in Hartsdale, NY. Seeing the power of a “fixed location”, Carvel built a store on the spot. I have made the pilgrimage to the Hartsdale “flagship” store, site of the Carvel Origin myth, many times. I am a Carvel obsessive, and as far as I’m concerned, there is no Carvel ice cream after 1989.

I am always looking for good soft-serve. I’m not above what I consider “bad” soft-serve, but the search for good soft-serve is a never ending quest, like the search for a “good” slice of pizza. Most soft-serve is “too icy”. I live in a part of the country where it is sometimes called a “creemee”. Last weekend, on the shores of Lake Champlain, I had a pretty good creemee.

In my quest, I get excited when the soft-serve is referred to as a “custard”. The last, and best, “excellent” soft serve I had was at Jones Beach. For those of you unfamiliar with Jones Beach, it is to beaches what the Marvel Movie Franchise is to art house cinema.

Since I have invoked the great ice-cream inventor and pitchman, Tom Carvel, it would be remiss of me not to include the Cookie Puss commercial. Cookie Puss was Tom’s way of cashing in on the movie “E.T.” (“CP” is roughly equivalent to “ET” if you are a first-generation Greek immigrant). The original Cookie Puss commercial can be found on YouTube, but the Cookie O’Puss commercial (which contains most of the original Cookie Puss commercial) is in much better shape. Here it is:

Post Script: The only “cake” we get for the Boss on her birthday is a Carvel ice cream cake. They are getting harder to find. Cakes by Friendly’s and other brands DO NOT CUT THE MUSTARD.

Flavors

Can we all agree that there are too many ice cream flavors? The earth is on fire and we are expending cycles trying to decide between “hazelnut malted moo crunchberry” and “Heath Bar Oreo double chocolate fudge blast”. At my local stand there is a flavor called “confetti.” I asked “does that come with dioxin, or is the dioxin extra?” For that, the kid fucked up my order. They can’t spit in the ice cream because you can see them, but teenagers always have ways to register their displeasure.

I want to open an ice cream stand with a hand-lettered sign advertising the following flavors:

• Sand & Gravel
• Republican Tears
• Yara Greyjoy’s Salty Peach
• Tobacco Stain
• Eau de Toilette
• Yam
• Macadam Naptha Crunch
• 15th Century Vanilla

I won’t provide any “samples”. If you want to taste Republican Tears, you’re going to have to buy a cone.

I’m sure we could all put together a list of seven flavors that should be on every list. We could call it “The original seven.” It would go something like: vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, coffee, black raspberry, mint chocolate chip, and peach. What? You disagree? I’m shocked! Let me make the case for the last three.

Black Raspberry When I was eighteen I was staying at my girlfriend’s parent’s house for the weekend. I was new to having a girlfriend. She asked me what my favorite meal was. I didn’t have a favorite meal, so I said, “steak and eggs” and guess what? She and her mom made me steak and eggs for dinner! You know, I understand that the patriarchy is bad and everything, and I want to destroy it as much as the next person, but I have to admit, it made being a adolescent dumbass guy MUCH MORE PLEASANT.

The point of the story is that since that meal I have said “steak and eggs” whenever asked about my favorite meal. I have a favorite meal. I sometimes make it for myself on my birthday.

Everyone has to have a “favorite” ice cream. Mine is black raspberry. The hard ice cream shop I went to as a kid was St. Clair Annex in Rhode Island. I’m not sure how I was first introduced to it, but for my entire life it has been my “favorite” ice cream even though I rarely get it.

Mint Chocolate Chip My previously mentioned friend Paul, a life-long and committed devotee of both early Good Humor and Carvel, is also an informed hard ice cream eater. He comes by it honestly. Getting ice cream other than Good Humor in Hastings often meant driving someplace, like a Carvel store. Paul’s father, Ed, was the soft target for an ice cream run. It didn’t take much work to convince him that ice cream was a good idea.

With Ed at the wheel there was a 50–50 chance that we would end up at a Baskin Robbins instead of Carvel. I don’t know what I got at Baskin Robbins. I was overwhelmed by the 31 flavors. I guess they didn’t have, or I didn’t like, their version of Black Raspberry. Paul often got mint-chocolate chip.

I’ve known Paul for a long time. We were in third grade together. About two years ago I decided to get mint-chocolate chip in honor of his visit. I’ve been listening to him talk about the size of chips and the mintiness of this ice cream for most of my life, but for some reason I never ordered it. I guess I thought that ordering Paul’s go-to flavor would threaten my identity. That it would make me his drone or subordinated side-kick. What a mistake! What a flavor. In my new found enthusiasm for mint-chocolate chip Paul delivered some devastating news. “It’s not so easy to find anymore,” he said, “A lot of places don’t have it.”

So now I look for it. I consider it an “old-skool” flavor. When it’s not there, I am dissapoint.

Peach My maternal grandmother was an ice cream eater. There is a super-8 film we call “The Ice Cream Caper” where she tries to hide behind my uncle so as not to be filmed eating an ice cream cone. Did you know that eating an ice cream cone is not lady like? It isn’t. Now you know. Can you imagine seeing Queen Elizabeth II eating an ice cream cone? Of course not.

My grandmother’s favorite ice cream flavor was peach. She didn’t get it from St. Clair’s. She got her peach ice cream from “the Greeks” at the Olympia Tea Room. Family lore says that Spiro kept peach ice cream as a flavor BECAUSE of my grandmother. She was a good customer. She was, in her own words, “Pleasantly plump, dear. Pleasantly plump.”

I recently found out that one of my older cousins, now 64, has been eating peach ice cream for her whole life as a result of an early introduction via my grandmother. I don’t know if I have ever eaten peach ice cream. I may have missed out. I could have had it when my taste buds weren’t ruined! I don’t need new flavors. I need to go back in time and eat the old ones!

Sundaes

If my old-man-shouting-at-clouds rant about ice cream flavors doesn’t make you want to say “OK, grandpa,” wait until I start in on the list of ingredients for sundaes. I like to stand in line and say out loud, “Why don’t they just add Borax to the list. Why can’t I get Borax on my sundae?”

Lucky for you, I have already written way too much about my favorite sundae.

Women and Ice Cream

Sitting at an ice cream stand is like sitting next to a bait lure for female humans. They show up individually and in groups. Young, old, of every class and color… women like ice cream.

So, why don’t men hang around ice cream stands trying to pick up women? The answer is that ice cream is somehow THE ANTIDOTE TO SEX.

Q: How sexy is ice cream? A: Not at all

Nobody ever said, “let’s eat a pint of ice cream and fuck.”

When women go out for ice cream they are going for ice cream. It’s pretty simple, really.

PS: If they are wearing sweat pants, ten bucks says they are going to ask for nuts on their sundae.

OK, I’ll stop.

If you made it all the way here, you must really like ice cream… or dreck. How about a dreck sundae?

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