THURSDAY THE LONG WAY: ICE-CREAM HISTORY

Thursday highlights food from out of the way places, food memories that have formed the way I view food, both cooking it and eating it. These memories may be inspired by recent meals, the food-media, or anything at all.

Ah, summer. It means ice-cream-- magic really. It also means that age-old jingle-jangle of the Mister Softee ice-cream truck passing slowly down the steet. Ice-cream is the perfect canvas for the imagination and for me it's inexorably linked with memories.

Did I say THE history of ice-cream? No, this is MY ice-cream history! Warning, this Thursday is really "the long way."

EARLY ICE CREAM MEMORIES

I don't remember my first ice-cream, nor do I remember being introduced to my favorite flavor. I do remember climbing up onto the kitchen countertop to get to the freezer for a container of Breyer's coffee ice-cream. If we're talking about a pure flavor without the addition of toppings, it's still my favorite.

I remember being told coffee would stunt my growth if I ate too much of it but that didn't stop me. I'm pretty sure it was after my grandmother had already given me a bowl of coffee ice-cream after an after-school snack, a grilled cheese sandwich that I was back up on the counter reaching for the freezer. Funny, but I never buy Breyer's these days, it strikes me as an ice cream easily draws ice crystals.

FREEZER FARE

Other early memories? Sure there were ice-cream sandwiches and the occasional Klondike Bar (there were a few in the freezer) but I was never really into either of them. The Klondike was better than an ice-cream sandwich but was pretty much about the chocolate and how it gooed up in your teeth on the sides of your mouth.

There's a polar bear on the cover, so as a kid you knew it was going to be cold and the wrapper was foil, so it was "cooler" than the paper coverings of other frozen fare. The Klondike's ice-cream square was thick, and didn't melt too fast but it wasn't an especially tasty ice-cream. I looked around online and discovered many more flavor combinations over the years than I'd realized. I always thought the jingle was pretty catchy, "Oh what would you do for a Klondike bar?" even if it was kind of silly.

The standard issue ice-cream sandwich cake on either side of a pretty bland vanilla always stuck to your fingers and tasted vaguely of the freezer. I have pleasant enough memories of eating one on the Fourth of July and a passing interest in the history of it, but I don't have enough nostalgia for them to make me go buy them. The ice cream melted too quickly, probably one of the reasons I learned to eat so fast.

SOFT SERVE

In a way, as a kid, removing flavor, ice-cream was really about the warring factions of soft serve and scooped ice-creams. Without the issue of flavor, I'd always opt for soft serve. When it came to soft serve, I remember getting what my grandparents called 'custards,' soft-serve ice-cream at a road-side place in Westfield, Mass., topped with chocolate or rainbow sprinkles or covered in chocolate sauce that immediately hardened. But Carvel really ruled my ice-cream universe.

Carvel ice-cream cakes were at every birthday and special occasion I can remember. The soft-serve was something I could eat buckets of. Whether it was the double cone, with chocolate on one side and vanilla on the other; a large cone with a twist of both chocolate of vanilla; or a large cone (not waffle cones but the soft crispy wafer ones) of just chocolate or vanilla, whatever I'd chose I'd make quick work of. And Carvel soft-serve is still my favorite.

While I never had a "Cookiepuss" (above, right)I did have a Garfield Carvel cake for one of my early birthdays. The Carvel televison commercials featuring bad graphics of Fudgie the Whale and Cookiepuss cakes are the fabric of summer-time nostalgia. "Car-vel, ice-cream. Car-vel, ice-cream," someone would sing. "America's favorite ice cream, every day at Car-vel..."

SUNDAES

For sundaes there were two places our parents took my sister and I when we were kids: Swensen's and Friendly's*. Swensen's had the better decor. The Swensesn's we visited felt like an old time ice-cream parlor with stained glass windows, wooden booths and tables that remind me now more of Ferrara's than the fake wood, cardboard-tile ceiling material and formica feelings I have from Friendly's.

[*Roy Rogers was the missing link between soft-serve and sundaes. Their soft serve sundae with caramel (my favorite) or hot fudge (to change things up once in a while, to pleasure-delay) was a childhood favorite. It was the end to a meal starring a roast beef sandwich with cheese loaded up at the "Fixin's Bar" with lots of pickles, lettuce, tomato, onion, ketchup and yum, horseradish sauce.

Roy Rogers' fate is a sad one (it seems as though McDonald's killed it)-- they're now few and far between. I'll have to make it a project to get to a Roy's justto see if I can still find a caramel sundaes (pix c/o Roy Rogers).]

But it's Friendly's that I have the fond feeling for and that's probably because it was Friendly's that really gave me what I wanted. I didn't know it but ice cream with candy and hot fudge was what I was craving.

I'd have a grilled cheese sandwich (with tomato inside), french fries and pickles served with a coke or occasionally a chocolate Fribble (essentially a milkshake*). But these are all just minor details, just a preamble to the main event, dessert.

[*The problem with the Fribble was that it was really airy. Sure, as a kid, the name, Fribble, seduced me once, inspiring me to think "Well, hey, that's a weird name, like dribble! Is it sweet? What's is that? I want one!" but it really just took up room that should be reserved for the real after-dinner treat.

As a frozen-tasty ice cream drink the Fribble was also a pretender by accompanying dinner instead of Coke. After all, let's be honest here, if you were really going to get such a drink, you'd go to Wendy's to get a Frosty.]

The first sundae I remember really fondly was a kid's sundae that turned the world upside-down, literally. The "Cone Head," now described as "Vanilla ice cream with a hot fudge-dipped sugar cone, whipped topping and Reese's Pieces^® candy." I seem to remember that the menu used to say that there was a surprise at the bottom and didn't give away what it was. I was genuinely surprised to find Reese's Pieces at the bottom. Served in a metal container with hot fudge this sundae (probably along with E.T.) is what introduced me to my life-long affair with chocolate and peanut butter (be it peanut butter cups, candies, chocolate dipped in peanut butter, peanut-butter and chocolate popcorn and well, I'm getting ahead of myself).

After graduating up from the Cone Head, my next stop on the ice cream sundae learning curve was the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup™ Sundae, described now on the menu in this way, "What goes great with a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup? How about vanilla ice cream, peanut butter topping, hot fudge, a mound of whipped topping and sprinkles? Add a spoon and you have a party!"

Besides the peanut butter cup, it was the peanut butter sauce that hooked me. I quickly moved on to the Reese’s© Pieces Sundae described thusly, "This one has it all! Enjoy this tasty treat made with vanilla ice cream, peanut butter and marshmallow toppings, hot fudge, a mound of whipped topping and a ring of delicious Reese's Pieces."

I liked this last sundae better because, well, because it was bigger. This 'bigger is better' philosophy then inspired me to test out the Jim Dandy™ "Divine decadence by the spoonful in this sinful split with five scoops of ice cream, strawberry, marshmallow and chocolate topping, a split fresh banana, sprinkles, walnuts and whipped topping," but I didn't stray long, I mean, the Jim Dandy was just kind of silly, who needed strawberry ice cream and where was the peanut butter?

Looking at the site now, I had no idea that they originated in Springfield, near where my father grew up in Westfield. It's probably why we visited somewhat frequently. While Friendly's seems to have tried to capitalize on the Starbuckization of coffee and ice-cream with their Mocha Latte Fribbleccino™ ("hot fudge and cappuccino come together to create the Mocha Latte Fribbleccino. Finished with whipped topping, it’s a great way to cool down") I'm glad to see my old favorites are still on the menu. One thing that mystified me as a kid was why Friendly's had their 'to-go' ice-cream freezer by the door, after all, the whole fun was eating the sundaes the way THEY made them. Who was going to put on the sauces at home? Where was the glass sundae dish going to come from?

THE WIDE WORLD OF ICE CREAM

All the ice-creams above were my standards until I was about 8 years old. That's when my sister and I spent some of the summer travelling with my mother in Italy and we were introduced to the dark richness of coffee gelato. Soon after we left for Hong Kong and the whole ice-cream equation changed when I met my first love, Häagen Dazs (in Admiralty).

Downtown Hong Kong's "Central," near the Landmark (to which ice cream is linked for me because we'd get some as a reward for behaving while my mother shopped) we'd step into Häagen Dazs off the hot, super busy sidewalk. This air-conditioned air smelled sweeter than any I'd ever breathed before.

Who cares that the name, Häagen Dazs, makes you think it's a Norwegian delicacy. Sure it's just clever marketing and it really originates from the Bronx. When you think about the fact that I never eaten this ice-cream until I moved to Hong Kong, that's actually a pretty cool thing.

The coffee ice-cream was super smooth and creamy, the flavor, a deeper, more complex and robust roasted coffee. And Häagen Dazs had time to perfect their recipe, it was one of the three original flavors along with vanilla and chocolate.

I bet you're wondering, so I'll tell you: no, I wasn't a fat kid, but I didn't particularly like going swimming at school during P.E. I was slightly self-conscious of having a bit of a belly (not embarassed or tubby enough to stop from asking for the largest size container).

The coffee flavor pretty much became my ice cream sanctum, my fortress of solitude, especially in the face of Chinese ice creams like green tea and yuck, bean ice cream (I still can't get on that icewagon). We'd get a pint of coffee to take home and another flavor for somebody else, chocolate chocolate chip or cookies n' cream, which I'd dig into after school when no one was looking if I'd already finished the good stuff.

As a kid, one of my favorite things to do after school was to grab the pint of coffee ice-cream out of the fridge and run into the living room to sit on the couch in front of the windows that overlooked Victoria Harbor and watch my afternoon cartoons before doing my homework.

If there was fresh whipped cream leftover from some other dessert, I'd take it and spoon it out directly into the pint container. The whipped cream would harden slightly because of the coldness of the ice cream, making a kind of cream coating similar to the chocolate shell stuff in which they dip soft-serve cones.

Man I liked that. I'd watch G.I. Joe, Thundercats, and the best cartoon, Dungeons & Dragons. While these shows were good (don't forget there were only 2 channels in English and in the mid-afternoon they were taken over by Chinese soap operas, sans subtitles) real-people television was even better, like Magnum P.I. The best? Well, it was the decade of Back to The Future and if I'm really going to be thorough about childhood favorites I have to mention the best show to watch while eating ice-cream, one with a time-travel theme.

Voyagers! Man the trailer looks lame now! When I was about 10 year old I thought it was the coolest thing ever-- especially the intro: "We travel through time to help history along. Give it a push when it's needed. When the Omni's Red it means history's wrong. Our job is to get everything back on track. Green light kid, We did it!"

I'd have to be careful not to finish off the whole pint, grabbing one more bite while returning it to the freezer. Bet you didn't know there was a site dedicated to time travel movies and tv shows, did you? Well, that's what Kitchen Toro is here for. And you're better for it, aren't you?

Back to the thread: we also tried Baskin Robbins in Hong Kong. I just couldn't get into it. Down-scale, less creamy and unluxurious, how many flavors did Baskin Robbins have? 31? Flava-flav? What? Forget it, for a good sundae in Hong Kong, I'd finish off a meal at Dan Ryan's Chicago Grill with vanilla ice-cream and hot fudge.

THE GREAT ICE-CREAM ESCAPE

At the French International School in Hong Kong where I attended from grades 4 through 8, an ice-cream truck pulled up in front of the school after classes were finished while students boarded the buses.

But there was always a really long line and I'd never have enough time to get an ice-cream and still make the bus. We had shortened days on Wednesday (they still do) and we were let out about noon. I plotted a way to sneak out and get to the front of the line (at left, the school cafeteria...I love that the EFI site says, "three canteens...where a group of supervisors look after the children during meal-time").

After eating lunch the prefects put us in a concrete playground (at right, down below under the tree cover) in a virtual dead-end at the bottom of a stairwell. I discovered that if I ate lunch quickly and stashed my backpack somewhere on the way to the lunchroom, and then told the French prefect (we called the prefects, "Hey!" and "Ho-ho," 'Hey!' because one would say "Hey!" when he didn't like what you were doing and "Ho-ho," because Hey's colleague, a big fat guy would immediately follow with, "Ho-ho,") that I needed to go get it before going to the playground.

Then I could run up the stairs, wait until the rush of kids spilled past Hey into the holding pen and then I could slip back down the stairs with my bag, outside to ice-cream freedom.

I'd run up the path on the hillside facing the school under cover of trees (at left, the far upper-left corner) and wait there until the ice-cream truck appeared. I'd let one or two kids get on line so that I didn't look like I was sitting out there eating ice-cream for an hour when the prefects came outside. All this for soft-serve, the airy kind that's not even the good stuff because it disappears really quickly and doesn't even give you that full, creamy Carvel feeling. Still these capers were pretty rewarding and Wednesdays were the best of schooldays. I still love 'em. Hey and Ho-ho! eventually figured out my strategy but I got at least three or four cones and my first taste of adrenaline out of it.

GROWING UP

When we returned to the States, the whole health kick thing had happened, trickling down to ice-cream and establishing the frozen yogurt craze. While tolerable, even enjoyable enough in single servings, TCBY's frozen yogurt ice-cream cakes started appearing at family functions (guh!) much to my dismay. The Country's Best Yogurt maybe, but when it came to their frozen yogurt cakes it was This Custard Boy's Yuckfest. I eventually just stopped eating dessert as my form of silent protest.

But TCBY didn't matter because not long after our return Ben & Jerry's exploded onto the scene. Super creamy and inventive with flavors (as gimmicky as they are punny sometimes) and toppings, Ben & Jerry's is delicious and great to have stashed away in the freezer.

Unfortunately, one of my favorites has been buried in their flavor graveyard, Jerry's Jubilee, "A medley of cherry and chocolate ice creams with cherries, fudge flakes and chewy chunks of brownies. Here's an edible jam of chocolate cherries galore. And though it had a sold-out tour its fans still wait for an encore." It seems to have been reinvented as Neapolitan Dynamite (no, I wasn't a fan of the movie, sorry).

My present favorite, "Chubby Hubby," (pretzel, fudge and peanut butter in vanilla ice-cream) isn't on their top ten list (Half-Baked is my hightest rated favorite flavor). I think what I like so much is that it's got a salty edge to it along with the sweet and the crunch.

Ben and Jerry are socially conscious, give away as many free ice cream cones once a year as you can wait on line for (albeit one at a time) and they're from Merrick, my home town on Long Island (by the way, their site has some employee recipes that look interesting).

A WORD ABOUT THE DQ

Now I didn't grow up with Dairy Queen and I've got to go far to get to one (Nyack) so I was late to the Blizzard scene. I can't speak to the different kinds of things you can mix into Dairy Queen's ice cream but in my limited experience I'd have to reluctantly admit it moves beyond the Frosty on my list of favorites

NOW

I still love Haagen Dazs' coffee ice-cream and love Carvel, but my most recent obsession, the ice cream I can't get enough of to the point that during 15 visits it's possible that I may have tried one other flavor combo, is created by Cold Stone Creamery. I know, I know-- I get the impression that I should probably hate it like some people hate Starbucks but for the life of me, beyond the whole singing for tips thing they do in Times Square which irritates me, I can't figure out why I shouldn't like the Cold Stone Creamery.

My flavor obsession, which can be traced back to Friendly's influence on my palate is called Peanut Butter Cup Perfection™ and consists of chocolate ice cream, peanut butter, Reese's Peanut Butter Cup® and fudge.

Where would I go now, besides Carvel for a soft-serve if I have my choice? The Shack-- their concrete's are almost creamier than Carvel (I know, it's sacrilege).

All this is to say, I've got a love for ice cream and the lilting, sing-song tune that drifts through summer streets from the Mister Softee trucks (trivia: did you know that in daytrading jargon, Mister Softee stands for Microsoft?).

And if you've read this far I'm going to leave you with the Mister Softee lyrics. Listen to them and ponder your own ice-cream memories: your most and least favorites. If you're in love with the stuff as much as I am I ask that you add your comments below. Please include any must-visit places you know of be they in New York or elsewhere.

And if you've traveled all the way to the end of this paean to my ice-cream memories, the least you deserve is to know what the heck the words to the Mister Softee jingle are! The punctuation and capitalization are those of the site's.

Click here to hear the tune first.

Here comes Mis-ter Sof-tee The soft ice cream man.
The cream-i-est dream-i-est soft ice cream you get from Mis-ter Softee For a re-freshing de-light su-preme Look for Mis-ter Sof-tee.
My milk shakes and my sun-daes and my cones are such a treat Lis-ten for my store on wheels ding-a-ling down the street.
The cream-i-est dream-i-est soft ice cream you get from Mis-ter Sof-tee for a re-fresh-ing de-light su-preme Look for Mis-ter Sof-tee S-O-F-T Dub-ble-E Mis-ter Sof-tee!

I'm beginning to wonder if I can't just make ice cream a major part or the entirety of my final project...I do have the machine afterall. Whoah. I better slow down, all this talk is going to my head.