THE ICE CREAM TASTERS
KRISIce Cream Taster
What can I say? I love ice cream. That should be good enough for a bio, right?
I come from family who knows their desserts! On my mother's side, ice cream was homemade (yes with 1000 cranks and rock salt...poor Grandaddy) as well as served on the side with a piece of pie or cake. On my father's side, WATCH OUT! These are hard core, bowl scrapin’, last piece snatchin' chocolate lovers who would demand chocolate as part of their dessert. If it was chocolate cake, it was served with ice cream. If it was yellow cake (I don’t remember much yellow cake), it was served with ice cream with chocolate sauce! This is where it all started, with the family.
I remember I was given a dollar as a treat by my mother when I was a child. We were in the mall and I wanted to buy a Baskin & Robbins cone of mint chocolate chip. It cost $.50 then. I ate it and thought that since I could afford another scoop, why not get another ice cream? I spent my entire 2 week's allowance on 2 scoops of ice cream like it was nothing. In the mid-80’s, a new favorite flavor emerged. Dad used to give me some money, enough to buy a half gallon (when it really was a half gallon) of Cookies n’ Cream from High’s Dairy Store. I walked the half mile up and back each weekend as my pilgrimage to bring back the sacred slab. Something about ice cream and The Dukes of Hazard told me that we were livin’ the good life!
I went through the cake cone phase while I was a kid, but my true love is a sugar cone. While I was living at college, there was a homemade ice cream shop within walking distance, "Double Twister." These people knew me and my friend by name! After moving a little further south, I would frequent the local Ben & Jerry's for lunch. (Yes, my whole lunch was ice cream.) I decided that since the counter clerks were the real experts, they had to know about concoctions that were brewed up in the back room that they did not sell to "normal customers." I would ask them to create a milkshake for me. You know, something they would enjoy themselves. I was known as the "Milkshake Lady" from then on.
Ice cream has always been a favorite of mine. I don't really go for soft serve, low-fat, sorbet, custard, frozen yogurt or any other varieties. Give me the fat! Give me the flavor! Now if you will excuse me, I have a craving...
- Kris
FREDIce Cream Taster
Quick. What do you get when you cross 100-degree temperatures with 90% humidity and a lot of play time in the middle of a Florida summer? The answer is: Kids who love anything cold, including ice cream.
Some of my first memories of ice cream center on waiting for the ice cream truck outside of the public swimming pool during my summers in Florida. Note the distinctly cool theme here with ice cream and a pool. My brothers, friends, and I would finish swimming for the day and then scrounge up our change -- Thank God for the secret stash of change on top of the vending machines! -- and go meet the ice cream truck as it pulled up to serve the screaming kids, kooky chime music playing the whole time.
Back then, my favorite ice creams were more along the lines of cones or other treats. Chocolate Chip Ice Cream Sandwich's, Drumstick's, and other creations topped my list. Part of that problem was because the only ice cream waiting for me at home was the rectangular box of PET-brand ice cream in vanilla or chocolate flavors. Now nothing against PET, but back then this was considered the "cheapie" brand of ice cream and it tasted like it. Sure, it satisfied, but that wasn't exactly hard to do on a typical Florida afternoon. (On a side note, who was the genius that thought up the rectangular ice cream box that opens on both ends? Did they ever think about ice cream in Florida in the middle of summer melting and leaking out of the bottom flaps of the box? Obviously not.)
My family would have an occasional "real" ice cream, but I didn't REALLY get into ice cream until I started buying the various brands for myself after I moved away to college. It was then that I started buying the Cookies and Cream, Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, Super Fudge Chunk Brownie Surprise, and every other wonderful mixture they had waiting for me in the freezer section. Over time, I've become a real fan of ice cream. I like Vanilla. I like Chocolate. I like them plain and mixed and combined with any and every ingredient thought of. I like scoops and milkshakes and malts and sundaes and floats. I just love ice cream and it's not only for the wonderful taste, but also for the way it takes me back to those innocent days filled with swimming and playing and capped off with an enjoyable ice cream. Is there anything better in life? I'm not so sure.
- Fred
