Ice Cream Rules

Our dialysis story — chapter two

I’m on my second cup of Breyer’s Lactose-Free Vanilla Ice Cream. My go-to stress food.

Stress food has two meanings. The one you might guess: a food that I turn to when I’m stressed. The one you won’t guess: a food around which I have so many rules that stress ensues if those rules aren’t followed.

Yes, I am stressed. Yes, I have a touch of OCD.

Ice cream must be smooth and creamy — no chunks, nothing that requires chewing. No chips of chocolate, no meaty nuts, no icy slivers of fruit. Ice cream should engage your tongue, not your teeth — should feel like satin on your taste buds and melt like butter on a summer’s day.

Ice cream never belongs in a bowl and only in a cone if you’re at an outdoor carnival that features face-painting and a petting zoo.

I want my ice cream served in a coffee mug—a substantial, wide-mouthed, ceramic mug with a half-circle, easy-to-grip handle. Having a cat painted on the cup is a definite plus.

Lastly, and this is very important, ice cream should only be eaten with an iced tea spoon. For those who don’t live in one of the Southern States of the USA, an iced tea spoon has a long slender handle and a shallow, oval bowl.

Above are two iced tea spoons. The one on the right is perfect and probably as old as I am (68). That spoon is from my childhood, and I have no idea how it came to be my possession. Once one of a dozen, its siblings have been missing for — well, for many, many years. Its handle is the perfect length and width, and its bowl is the perfect size and shape.

The spoon on the left is one of six I recently ordered from Amazon. I thought having more iced tea spoons on hand would be good. After all, if the old spoon disappeared, I couldn’t eat ice cream!

Unfortunately, these spoons were a disappointment. Handles are too long, bowls are too narrow, and the weight is too much. Not at all acceptable for ice cream, but they might suffice for iced tea, especially if I’m serving a Yankee who doesn’t know a lick about iced tea.

I just finished my second cup of Breyer’s. If the stress surrounding my husband’s soon-to-be-real kidney dialysis continues, as I’m sure it will, I will have regained all the weight I lost when I was sick in 2021.

Well, maybe not. I still walk 4.5 to 6 miles a day. My doctor said it would be almost impossible to gain weight walking that much — unless I spend as much time eating as I do walking. I don’t.

Also, the ice cream isn’t an additional food, like your typical dessert consumed after a meal. I skip the meal and go for the ice cream — helps to save calories.

Yeah, I know, it’s not healthy. But, as a vegetarian, I tend to lack adequate calcium and protein in my diet. Ice cream provides both, so it can’t be all bad, right?

As I chronicle this healthcare experience, I must write about how I cope with stress — badly, isn’t that obvious? But I think my Breyer’s in a coffee cup with an iced tea spoon is less damaging than a bottle of bourbon (yum) or a six-pack of beer (yuck). Besides, I have a two-coffee-cup-ice-cream limit.

And, just like booze, Breyer’s isn’t cheap. And that’s enough to control my addiction.

© Dennett 2023

Here is Chapter One of Our Dialysis Story: