Tuesday, August 09, 2005

Ice Cream Yummers


A couple of times of year, I make ice cream. I get a wild hair and it’s time to make some. Sometimes I only make it once a year. But when it’s time, it’s time. And people, I feel it comin’ on. I’ve made flavors like lavender honey, vanilla bean, tequila, mango, almond cherry, peach, among others. The lavender honey was damn good.

But fresh back from Hawaii, I’m thinking it may be pineapple, or coconut. But then again we have some fresh lemon verbena I could pick from the garden and make a nice sorbet or sherbet….Does anyone know the difference between gelato and ice cream? The recipes in today’s Food Day show gelato has cream, but perhaps not near as much as ice cream? Is that the only main difference?

So here’s the inside secret…I may be a homemade ice cream aficionado, but when it comes to store-bought, my hands down favorite comes in the Safeway brand ice cream box/block. And it’s pink. Peppermint. The best kind of ice cream there is.

AdRi recently took the ice cream quiz. She’s strawberry. I took it:
You Are Rocky Road Ice Cream
Unpredictable and wild, you know how to have fun.
You're also a trendsetter who takes risks with new things.
You know about the latest and greatest - and may have invented it.
You are most compatible with vanilla ice cream.


I just took this quiz and I’m Chocolate Chip
If you're a Chocolate Chip ice cream type, you're a creative force to be reckoned with. No doubt you've got a competitive streak a mile wide. The good news is that it brings out the best in you by forcing you to live up to your own demanding standards. Still, you can be rather unforgiving at times with those who don't share your vision and drive. Friends value your magnetism, charm and originality. When it comes to romance and relationships, Chocolate Chips are best off with high-achieving Butter Pecans and empathetic, insightful Chocolates. Fun fact: Chocolate chip ice cream lovers tend to also indulge in other “chunky” flavors, such as Cookie Dough, Mint Chip and Rocky Road.

Here’s a great idea for a blog or job: This would be a very fun job: ice cream tasting . Do you think they spit after tasting the ice cream or do they swallow? And if they swallow, how many extra miles do they have to do on the treadmill to work off that job? That’s hurting my brain just thinking about it. For some reason I’m playing over and over in my head the scene from Sideways where the guy wigs out and drinks like a madman from the spittoon at a wine tasting. Eeeww. Grossed out now. Back to happy places…

Did you know Philadelphia is nicknamed the ice cream capital of the country? Yep, and at the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition of 1876, and according to that fine web site, “the confectioners combined candy with ice cream to create goblets, cups, saucers, and bowls that resembled Bohemian glass, ice cream ships on spun-sugar waves, ice cream chicks inside spun-sugar nests filled with ice cream eggs, log cabins constructed of ice cream and ladyfingers, and an ice cream Mount Vesuvius, that was actually set ablaze before it was served.” Shout out to AnSch, one of Philly’s newest residents. Have some ice cream for me, will ya?!

5 comments:

geeekgirl said...

My mom always made blackberry ice cream. We had to pick the berries and do all of the cranking. But it was worth every minute of work.

Kerri said...

Wow... an entire blog entry on ice cream. What is this wonderful place I have found? Haha. Okay, seriously. Gelato is like pudding, almost. I can't say I know, because I haven't had it, but someone I know went to Italy and said it was like creamy, cold pudding and that is was really, really good. And home made ice cream rocks. I'm more of a frozen yogurt person myself (this way, i don't feel guilty about eating it almost every day), but ice cream is SO good. Homemade is always better than store bought.

Rozanne said...

I'm vanilla according to the first quiz, which means I'm "a risk taker, who's up for anything new."

OK.

That scene from Sideways that you described was my absolute favorite.

I vote that you make coconut ice cream.

Anonymous said...

I'm Rocky Road
Always the trendsetter? Hmmm acheeTinyeewww!
But I would much rather have Cucumber Gelato or Daquiri Ice from 31 flavors.
Did you know that I live from one of the world's coolest ice cream brand's factory. can you guess, huh, can you?

Anonymous said...

I'm strawberry, too, like AdRi, according to the first quiz. Even when I changed an answer or two, I still came up as strawberry.

In the second one, I'm 44% strawberry and 33% butter pecan, 11% of me is chocolate chip and chocolate. Zippo for vanilla, except I have to say that this description for vanilla fits: "You may have a hard time making up your mind." Oh, lordy, have they been spying on me?! And considering what a mixed bag of personalities I came up with in the quiz, I think there must be some vanilla hidden in me somewhere.

Hmmm, all this talk about ice cream is making me hungry!!

Off the subject...maybe one of you more 'puter savvy types can help me. How the heck do you eliminate those pesky side ads that cover part of the text? Clicking on it brings up a new page. I tried clicking and dragging with no luck and I can't see any way to close it. A pop up blocker doesn't seem to affect it either. Am I doomed to guessing what is behind the stupid and annoying ads?

L