Fandango’s Provocative Question #171
In a nice break from all the recent bad news, today question is about (are you ready?) ice cream. It’s summertime, after all. What could be more “on point” than summer’s favorite treat?
What is your favorite ice cream? Please list not only your favorite flavor, but also the brand that is your favorite. Please be specific.
Ice cream isn’t just something to eat. It’s full of memories. I remember racing from my house down to the street with a dime clutched in my hand. The ice cream truck had come! Oh joy. It could be a very long run from home to the truck, so you also had to yell “Hey, wait for me!”
There are no more ice cream trucks. Maybe they were not profitable, but they were such an important part of summer all those years ago. I don’t even remember if the ice cream was particularly good, but it was ice cream. It was also one of the few things for which my mother always gave me money. Summer and ice cream were truly like a horse and cart. They belonged together.
I’m pretty sure ice cream is better now than it was, at least the ice cream you buy in blocks at the grocery. Even the frozen yoghurt is delicious and I sometimes can’t tell the difference between them.
Both Garry and I favor strawberry, though other fruit flavors are also great. I think Garry’s extra special favorite is Rum Raisin (Edy’s Gourmet, usually), but both of us will eat almost any flavor if that’s what’s available. Except coffee. I’m not especially fond of coffee-flavored things, though I love coffee. That was my mother’s favorite and we always had coffee ice cream in the freezer.
Brands? I haven’t found a bad brand in years. They’re all good, even the store’s own. We also favor whatever is on sale, if it’s a flavor we like. It’s hard to find Rum Raisin, so I buy it when I find it. I also don’t like ice cream with a lot of stuff in it. If I want other things on or in my ice cream, I’ll add them myself.
Oh, almost forgot. I’m a big fan of pistachio ice cream, though that’s another flavor that’s hard to find. I haven’t seen it on the shelves in a couple of years. Maybe it’s more availabe in bigger supermarkets.
My favorite favorite are ice cream sandwiches. I got on the scale this morning and realized I’m carrying two and a half additional pounds of ice cream sandwiches since last week. Am I giving up ice cream? No, but I think maybe less and no more than one ice cream sandwich per day. Garry has put on almost 17 pounds since I started feeding him ice cream. That’s great for him and he looks better. It’s not as great for me.
It’s hard to find the right balance when I am feeding one man who is on Weight Watchers, another who needs to gain weight or stay even. And then, there’s me. I’m fine though I wouldn’t mind dropping a few pounds.
Nonetheless, it’s summer. Sitting here, writing about ice cream and knowing we have a block of cherry vanilla in the freezer? I feel a bit munchy. A little bit would be okay, wouldn’t it?
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Categories: #Food, #FPQ, Anecdote, Childhood, Music, Provocative Questions, Summer, Word Prompt
SERENDIPITY: SEEKING INTELLIGENT LIFE ON EARTH 
Oberweis butter pecan!
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That’s another great flavor we never see on the shelves. That is the trouble with living in a rural setting. Shopping can be pretty limited.
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I haven’t lived in the suburbs for 20 years so I don’t see the ice cream van on the streets. They are alive and well at events though. Still, I do remember how the tinny sound of “Greensleeves” played on the van’s loudspeakers would make us start looking for small change and running to find him before he moved on. Ice cream was an occasional treat when I was a small child in England. We might get a cornet (cone), a tub, or Dandy as they called them in Australia or sometimes mum would give us a couple of shillings to buy a “family brick” from the van. That would come wrapped in coated cardboard which I can’t recall ever melting in the English summers. It was only when we came to Australia that ice cream became more of an everyday thing that you bought from the supermarket in a tin. Those tins would be very collectible now. Of course, back then we thought Neopolitan was pretty exotic.
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They discontinued ice-cream trucks in this area before I was in High School, so it had to be more than 50 years ago. It may just be in the northeast. Maybe it’s – at least in the cities and close suburbs – a problem with very crowded street. “Good Humor” had the most trucks, but they are now part of Breyer’s, even though some of their brands are distributed under the “Good Humor” label. Bring back the trucks!
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I remember eagerly waiting after dinner each night for the Good Humor truck, with the always friendly Good Humor man, to pull onto our street. What a treat that was! And like you, I love the taste of coffee but I’m not a fan of coffee ice cream.
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My mother thought coffee ANYTHING was good. She drank coffee ALL the time. I think she always had a cup of coffee in or near her hand unless she was sleeping — then it was Canadian Club. Tea was, she said, for sick people. She was way more ardent about coffee (and Canadian Club which she only drank at night for “medicinal purposes”) than I’ve ever been.
I probably should have suspected she was better acquainted with the wild life than I thought because she was the one who taught be how to eat if we were going drinking so I could drink more and not get drunk. She also warned me to drink it straight and skip mixed drinks, one of the odder pieces of advice I got from mom.
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Great response, Marilyn, but one correction: yes, there still ARE ice cream trucks! Granted, they’re less common these days, but I have heard that obnoxious but catchy little tune jingling along the streets of the suburbs. Not where I live, which is a senior community (although we love ice cream as much as the kids), but in family-based neighborhoods, like our old neighborhood, where our daughter & son-in-law now live.
In Latino neighborhoods and in Chicago, there are Mexican ice cream street vendors – and they have some great flavors that most ice cream trucks don’t have, such as coconut!
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I am very glad to hear that. At least somewhere, those bells will make the kids running for the truck. I wonder what an ice-cream pop cost these days? Pretty sure it isn’t a quarter!
My son says you can find them in suburbs, just not rurally or in cities.
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