I Scream for Ice Cream

Ice cream has been a big part of my life. Starting in the late 1940s when I was about two years old, I would cry if my parents drove past Sipes Corner, a roadside diner, without stopping for ice cream. My father was usually moved to turn in to buy me a cone, but not when he was in a hurry. I usually got my ice cream, but as for Sipes Corner, the restaurant was wiped out by a tornado in north central Illinois a few years ago. Still, the gene favoring the consumption of ice cream must have been dominant in my DNA, as I have continued my desire for that frozen treat.

Butter brickle and cherry dip

In the early 1950s, I remember that evening visits to my grandparents’ home often ended with a dish of ice cream for all. My grandfather loved his ice cream, and I can still remember the flavor of his favorite, butter brickle. But I grew up in corn and beef cattle country where there weren’t too many dairy farms. I suspect that’s why there were hardly any ice cream shops. The best we could do was a local Dairy Queen where I favored the vanilla soft-serve cherry-dipped cone. The soft serve wasn’t great shakes, but combining it with a sweet cherry-flavored dip coating that instantly hardened for a nice crunch was not to be missed. Chocolate was a distant second-best, in my mind.

Root beer and vanilla

Growing up in the 1950s and 60s coincided with an explosion in the popularity of drive-in dining establishments, and I certainly loved to visit the local Dog N Suds and particularly the A&W. The A&Ws featured an excellent root beer, so I soon took to what they called a Black Cow, a root beer float with vanilla ice cream. Serve me that with a good A&W hamburger, and I’m happy to this day. I’ll take my ice cream fix in any number of creative fashions.

Alas and alack, I grew up and moved to Boston in 1967 after graduating from college. There weren’t any A&Ws in Boston, and I didn’t have a car for a trip to a drive-in. But what to my wondering eyes should appear but Friendly’s and Brigham’s, those wonderful sandwich and ice cream shops that were part of the New England landscape. Coming from an ice cream shop desert, I found them to be a marvel, with a vast variety of flavors, an oasis for my taste buds and friendly to my wallet. I often frequented Brigham’s for a vanilla chocolate-chip ice cream cone.

Steve’s and mix-ins

Of course, the Boston-area ice cream environment moved to a new level a few years later in the early 1970s when Steve’s Ice Cream opened in Somerville. It wasn’t just their home-churned ice creams with real cream; it was also the hand “mix-ins” of chopped Heath Bars and M&Ms, nuts, and other mouth-watering additions. Steve’s was the kind that rivaled hand-cranked ice cream, and it drew the kind of crowds that meant waiting in line for 30 to 45 minutes for ice cream. It was worth my time to drive there, find a parking place, and wait for my turn for a cone.

Vanilla Swiss Almond

Fast forward: A few years ago, I found a premium supermarket ice cream that quickly became a favorite: Haagen Dazs Vanilla Swiss Almond. Its base is a premium vanilla ice cream with the right notes of creaminess and flavor, with chocolate-covered almonds mixed throughout. You can find me on most nights enjoying a few scoops of this for dessert before I go to bed. This past summer, I experienced a crisis when the supermarket suddenly didn’t have that flavor – or, for that matter, many Haagen Dazs flavors at all. Whatever problems were occurring in the logistics pipeline, I was dislocated from my favorite concoction. I just couldn’t find a substitute. I tried some others, but they just weren’t the same. Then, late last fall, the pints of Haagen Dazs slowly began to return to the shelves. I tried hard to make sure that I didn’t hoard, but eventually, the supply returned to normal, and now I can get what I need to satisfy the craving.

We’re lucky enough to have a few old-fashioned ice cream stands in our area, and this summer, I’m planning to make a pilgrimage to discover them all.

Our own flavors for an upcoming story

Now, we often serve our own homemade ice cream for dessert for dinner guests, and I’d love to tell you about the flavors we’ve recently dished up. But since entertaining has been pretty much frozen for almost a year, that will have to wait until we’re once again inviting friends for ice cream to share. How about you? What’s your ice cream experience and current favorite?

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