I have absolutely no idea where this idea came from but I have been thinking about ice cream today. So let’s use that for the memory prompt.
As a child my favorite ice cream flavor was chocolate mint. Actually it still is. As I child I also hated going to the dentist but right near the dentist office was an ice cream parlor. Knowing there was a good chance to get an ice cream after a visit to the dentist (which was always filled with equal parts pain and humiliation) was about the only way I could make myself get into the car. The entire time I was sitting in that odd-smelling office looking out the wavy glass windows at Concord Elementary school across the street, all I could do was think about the possibility of ice cream. After I survived all that pain and suffering my order was always the same. Mint chocolate chip. On a sugar cone.
At home we usually only had vanilla ice cream but we had all sorts of goodies to put on top. Bosco chocolate syrup was a staple. As was a selection of fresh walnuts or almonds from our trees. We had a little metal hand grinder for the nuts and I loved to grind them into a really fine powder to pour over the chocolate sauce. Sometime we had the marshmallow creme or butterscotch topping and whipped cream. But my favorite was always just the vanilla ice cream and chocolate syrup that I would stir until it was soup and then drink it like a milkshake.
After skating lessons we would go to Berkeley Farms restaurant in Walnut Creek and I would often get a hot fudge sundae. Sometimes a chocolate milk shake where they actually brought you the big silver container they made it in to the table so you got every last drop of the shake to yourself.
Your turn. Do you have any childhood memories about ice cream?
Ice cream? You happen to have hit upon my very favorite topic in the world! When I was growing up, Dreyer’s was the ice cream we always got at home. Back then, they didn’t have all the fancy stuff there is today (I shudder to think how fat I would be if they had Choctal in my youth.) Mint chip and mocha almond fudge were my favorite flavors.
After ballet lessons (for a fleeting year in 3rd grade until I got pneumonia), sometimes my mom would let me get a Baskin Robbins cone. Mint chip was my favorite there, too. I loved how the chocolate was flecks and not actual chips. Always on a plain cone (“The ice cream is already loaded with sugar, you don’t need a cone made of sugar, too.” English = second language for my mom, maybe she took the name of the cone a tad too literally.)
But the best memory is of Edy’s and Farrell’s, two old-fashioned ice cream parlors and exalted birthday party destination of the cool kids. We would get candy cigarettes, pixie sticks, PEZ, and a giant sundae for all the kids to share. There was so much stuff on the sundae, I have no idea what flavors the scoops were, nor do I have any idea what the toppings were, as everything comingled into a gooey, sweet, multi-colored mess under a mountain of whipped cream, but we had the best time trying to eat it all.
Oh you just helped me remember Farrells. Were they the ones who had the giant sundae they brought out on a stretcher with sirens and sparklers? I always wanted to order one just for the attention.
Ice Cream
I grew up in the suburbs of Sydney, NSW, Australia. When it was the school holiday, Mum would take my brother and I on the train into Town – the CBD of Sydney. There our favourite treat was to wind our way downstairs to Cahill’s Restaurant.
It seemed the epitome of high-class dining to me. The little tables had starched white cloths, the lighting was dim, and the menus had a leather cover. We always read the menu, but we always had the same thing: ice cream and Cahill’s own caramel sauce. The ice cream was plain vanilla. It came in a glass bowl, topped with warm, gooey, burnt sugary caramel. We scooped tiny bites of ice cream, slowly savouring each cold sweet mouthful. If we’d been at home, and Mum wasn’t looking, we’d both have licked our bowls. But somehow both of us knew not to lick, not to talk above a whisper and never, never to ask for more.
Book Chook http://thebookchook.blogspot.com
Re: Ice Cream
What a perfectly lovely memory. Thank you for sharing it.
When I was a kid, the ice cream man still puttered through the neighborhood. We could hear the ring of his bell blocks away. One day, I begged a nickel from my mother and ran outside to play on the swings while waiting for him. I was afraid I’d lose the nickel, so I put it in my mouth for safekeeping and accidentally swallowed it. By then, the ice cream man was only a block away! Oh, no, what to do? I was too embarrassed to go ask for another nickel. So I stuck my finger down my throat, gagged up the nickel, wiped it off on the grass, and gave it to the man. He probably thought it was just sticky from sweat 🙂
Oh that is hilarious! We didn’t have an ice cream truck in our neighborhood when I was a kid but where I raised my kids, we did. I was sooooo sick of that darn ice cream truck song. 🙂
Oh and you just helped me remember ice cream sandwiches that we used to get at, of all places, the local swimming pool. They cost a quarter and I remember getting the biggest thrill out of eating that ice cream sandwich on the grass near the pool.
There was so much good local ice cream around here when I was a kid. Lots of local dairies made their own ice cream and sold it on site.
One of the best was Rutter’s Dairy, which had its own restaurant. You could order a carousel sundae. That was a scoop of vanilla ice cream in a little paper cup, surrounded by four Stauffer’s* animal crackers and topped with a paper umbrella like they put in exotic drinks. That was the coolest thing when you were a kid! I had a collection of those paper umbrellas from my sundaes for years.
Rutter’s also served something they called The Suicide Delight: twelve scoops of ice cream in your choice of flavors, with complimentary Alka Seltzer. My brother ate one once. Everyone in the restaurant cheered.
*Stauffer’s biscuit company is still here in York, so it was a very local treat.
Oh gosh…I love the sound of The Suicide Delight. Thanks for sharing your memories.
When I was little, my grandparents lived around the corner. On Saturdays, I got to go with Grandpa to get the mail at the post office, wash the car, and stuff. He usually took me to Baskin Robbins where I would get a double scoop. I loved going with Grandpa because he let me ride up front and he never nagged me about the ice cream melting.
Daiquri Ice on top, bubble gum on the bottom of a sugar cone. I usually spit the bubble gum into a napkin to save for later.
I think they recently stopped offering Daiquri Ice, which was my favorite ice cream of all time.
Great grandpa memory. Thanks for sharing.