Posts Tagged With: Ice cream

198/365: National Peach Ice Cream Day

Posted on July 17, 2013 by Midwest Mark

Today’s holiday will leave you feeling peachy keen! July 17 is National Peach Ice Cream Day.

We’ve already celebrated a ton of ice cream-inspired holidays, it seems – and there are more to come. If you haven’t been following our blog religiously (gasp!) and are curious about the history of ice cream, click on the preceding link. Instead, I’ll talk about…umm…

What in the heck am I going to talk about?!

Peach ice cream has long been my mom’s favorite flavor, so there’s that. I’m partial to good ol’ vanilla, which is the most popular flavor in America, while Tara is chock full of love for chocolate. Basically, anything by Tillamook – an Oregon-based creamery that makes a variety of delicious dairy items including cheese, yogurt, milk, and sour cream – is top-notch. Tillamook’s cheese factory – conveniently located in the town of Tillamook, on the Oregon coast – is a fun place to visit, and a popular tourist draw. We get out that way once a year or so, and their onsite ice cream parlor is one of the main reasons why.

Now that I’ve given both Tillamook and my mom shout-outs, I guess we can get down to the business at hand. Peach ice cream, that is. Turns out peach ice cream is difficult to find. But once we went on the road again and pulled into the Fred Meyer parking lot, we found a container of Ben & Jerry’s Willie Nelson’s Country Peach Cobbler ice cream. Which was really, really good, I might add.

National Peach Ice Cream Day

 

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182/365: National Creative Ice Cream Flavor Day*

Posted on July 1, 2013 by Midwest Mark

I scream, you scream, we all scream for today’s food holiday, especially when the flavor is wacky. July 1 is National Creative Ice Cream Flavor Day!

It’s also National Ginger Snap Day, but we recently had ginger snaps in honor of National Gingerbread Day. Besides, few treats embody summer as perfectly as ice cream. And in Portland, we’ve got the perfect place to celebrate creative ice cream flavors. There was no resisting this holiday!

The line for Salt & Straw: typically long, especially on a hot summer evening.

The line for Salt & Straw: typically long, especially on a hot summer evening.

Vanilla may be America’s most popular flavor of ice cream, but thanks to companies such as Ben & Jerry’s (“Chunky Monkey,” “Cherry Garcia,” etc.), unusual flavor combinations have become a fun – and increasingly popular – draw for ice cream lovers, particularly during warm summer months. In Portland, Salt & Straw, a “farm-to-cone” ice cream shop perfectly representative of Portland’s food culture and unique vibe, opened their first location a few years ago, and were an instant hit. Not just because they pride themselves on sourcing local, organic, sustainable ingredients, but because of their creative flavors. They change with the seasons, but popular choices include Pear With Bleu Cheese, Honey Balsamic Strawberry with Cracked Pepper, Bourbon Barrel Aged Stout, and Arbequina Olive Oil. Salt & Straw pairs with local vendors and restaurants for some very clever and unusual flavors. It doesn’t hurt that their ice cream is very creamy and smooth, made with 17% butterfat and very little air in the churning process. It truly is delicious, and has become the city’s newest Voodoo Doughnut, an overnight sensation garnering big press. Both Saveur Magazine and Oprah’s O Magazine have named it one of the best ice cream shops in America, a can’t-miss destination for foodies in the Rose City.

Goat Cheese Marionberry Habanero.

Goat Cheese Marionberry Habanero.

After dinner, we made a beeline for Salt & Straw. Along with everybody else in Portland, apparently. That’s what happens when you cross a sultry summer evening with a trendy boutique ice cream shop. We ended up waiting in a line 40 people deep for about twenty minutes. Well worth it, though. Tara got Chocolate Blueberry Rice Krispy Treats while I opted for Goat Cheese Marionberry Habanero. Both were delicious, and I think you’d agree, very creative flavors!

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181/365: National Ice Cream Soda Day

Posted on June 30, 2013 by Midwest Mark

You just may float on a happy haze when you celebrate today’s perfectly summery food holiday. June 30 is National Ice Cream Soda Day!

June 20 was also National Ice Cream Soda Day, so I suppose if you didn’t get your fill back then, today’s your encore. We chose to celebrate the vanilla milkshake on that day instead so as not to repeat ourselves. Just to keep us on our toes, there’s also a National Root Beer Float Day coming up in August. Knowing that, we should have opted for something a little more unique today, but laziness got the better of us.

Ice cream sodas, or floats, go by the name “snowballs” in the U.K. and “spiders” in the land Down Under, where women work and men plunder. They are exactly what their name implies: ice cream served in a soft drink. Ice cream sodas were invented in 1874 by Robert McCay Green in Philadelphia. According to legend, during that city’s sesquicentennial celebration, Robert ran out of cream for the flavored sodas he was selling on a particularly hot day, and substituted ice cream instead. But Robert explained in an interview that his creation was no accident: he wanted to invent a new treat to draw customers away from a competitor who had a bigger, fancier soda fountain. He experimented by mixing vanilla ice cream with soda water and a choice of 16 different flavored syrups. This new treat was a big hit, and Green was so proud of his invention, his will stipulated that “Originator of the Ice Cream Soda” be carved on his tombstone when he died.

While teens loved the tasty treat, many adults did not, and the drink was actually banned by some conservative local governments who believed that soda, which was marketed as a “miracle cure” (for what – skinniness?), was a controlled substance that should not be served or purchased on Sundays. In an effort to boost business, soda fountains came up with a treat that contained ice cream but no soda. They coined the new dessert a “sundae” that they could serve on “soda’s day of rest.”

Now, that’s clever!

To celebrate, Tara and I made root beer floats. I mean, what other type of soda-and-ice-cream combination can ever top the classic?

National Ice Cream Soda Day

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171/365: National Vanilla Milkshake Day

Posted on June 20, 2013 by Midwest Mark

Those susceptible to brain freezes beware: June 20 is National Vanilla Milkshake Day!

The term “milkshake” has been around since the 1800s, though it originally referred to an entirely different drink altogether. It first appeared in print in 1885 and was described as a”sturdy, healthful eggnog type of drink, with eggs, whiskey, etc., served as a tonic as well as a treat.” I don’t know if your liver would necessarily agree about the “healthful” part, but whatever. By 1900 the alcohol had disappeared, and milkshakes were made with vanilla, chocolate, or strawberry syrups. It wasn’t until 1922 when the milkshake as we know it and love it was invented; a Walgreens employee named Ivar “Pop” Coulson added two scoops of ice cream to a malted milk (milk, chocolate, and malt powder) and, voila! A new creation was born. By the 1930s milkshakes were popular across the nation, and the invention of freon-cooled refrigerators during that decade provided a safe and reliable method of making and dispensing ice cream. Fancy stainless steel automatic milkshake mixing machines soon followed, and in the 1950s Ray Kroc bought exclusive rights to one of these automated milkshake makers to speed up production in his fledgling new chain of fast-food restaurants called McDonald’s. These machines folded air into the drinks, making them smooth and fluffy. Like a koala bear. Milkshakes have remained popular over the years, evoking nostalgia for a bygone era. They are an especially profitable source of revenue for restaurants since the fluffy drinks contain so much air; one market research study showed that 75% of the cost of an average milkshake is pure profit. Almost makes me want to not order a milkshake just out of spite, but come on…how could I do that? Milkshakes are delicious!

To celebrate, we stopped at McDonald’s. After all, it was Ray Kroc’s foresight that helped milkshakes become as widely popular and readily available as they are now.

National Vanilla Milkshake Day

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158/365: National Chocolate Ice Cream Day*

Posted on June 7, 2013 by Midwest Mark

Want the latest scoop? Psst…June 7 is National Chocolate Ice Cream Day!

It’s also National Doughnut Day, a “floating” food holiday that occurs on the first Friday in June. Normally we’d be all over that, except for the not-so-insignificant fact that tomorrow is National Jelly-Filled Doughnut Day. Gotta have a little variety, you know? Then again, a few days ago we celebrated rocky road ice cream…

But back-to-back doughnut days are overkill. So we went with ice cream instead.

When it comes to ice cream flavors, vanilla is the most popular choice hands down (with 29% of the vote). Chocolate comes in second place (8.9%). But hey, there’s no shame in being a runner-up! (Unless you’re only up against one other competitor. Sorry, Super Bowl-losing San Francisco 49ers). Chocolate ice cream is made by blending cocoa powder with eggs, cream, sugar, and vanilla. It’s been around for centuries; the first ice cream parlor in America opened the same year we became a country, in 1776. Quakers brought over their favorite ice cream recipes, and the frozen treat became a widespread hit. Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson all indulged in ice cream when they weren’t busy flying kites in thunderstorms or secretly crossing the Delaware River and stuff. In fact, there’s a brown smudge on one corner of the Declaration of Independence that is rumored to be a dripping from the chocolate ice cream cone that Jefferson was licking when he put quill to parchment. That’s a totally made up fact, by the way. But it could’ve happened.

To celebrate, we picked up a small container from Fred Meyer. And ate it in the bedroom by candlelight. Chocolate = romance, right?

Chocolate Ice Cream

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153/365: National Rocky Road Ice Cream Day

Posted on June 2, 2013 by Midwest Mark

You may encounter a rocky road ahead, but trust us – that’s a good thing, at least on June 2. It’s National Rocky Road Ice Cream Day!

Rocky road ice cream traditionally contains chocolate ice cream, marshmallows, and nuts. It was created in 1929 by William Dreyer of Oakland, California. A year earlier, Dreyer had formed an ice cream company with Joseph Edy. One day William, apparently bored out of his mind,  borrowed his wife’s sewing scissors and cut up marshmallows and walnuts, adding them to chocolate ice cream to create a new flavor. There’s no record of his wife’s reaction to his use of her scissors in such a manner, but the flavor was a hit. After the Stock Market Crash in October of that year, Dreyer named the ice cream rocky road “to give folks something to smile about in the midst of the Great Depression.” And smile people did, when they weren’t busy jumping out of high rise buildings and stuff. Eventually, the walnuts were replaced by almonds. Interestingly, in Australia people add jam to their rocky road ice cream, and in the U.K., cherries and raisins are incorporated within.

We kind of, sort of, celebrated rocky road ice cream earlier this year when we used it as a base for Heavenly Hash. But this time, we were able to enjoy a simple bowl of unadulterated rocky road. It’s one of my favorite ice cream flavors, so I had no problem eating a couple of scoops today!

Rocky Road Ice Cream

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104/365: National Pecan Day

Posted on April 14, 2013 by Midwest Mark

Today is Groundhog Day! Well, not really, but it sure feels like it. Because we celebrate National Pecan Day. Even though we already celebrated National Pecan Day on March 25. Early on, we were warned there were a few duplicate holidays. Several are devoted to potatoes. There’s even a second Coq au Vin Day. Honoring a food more than once seems like overkill, especially when there are plenty of deserving foods that do not have their own holiday yet. Like Spam.Deja Vu

And it also presents a dilemma. I’ve already cracked my jokes and shared the history of the food. I don’t want to repeat myself, so if you are interested in the background of pecans, click on the link above.

In the meantime, I guess we’ll just keep this post really short and let you know how we indulged in the tasty nut this time around. A few weeks ago, we celebrated joint holidays and made pecan waffles. Had I known then that pecans had another day coming up, I’d have just gone with the waffles. Instead of enjoying them for breakfast, this time around we indulged in dessert. Tillamook Caramel Butter Pecan ice cream, to be exact. If you’re not from around these parts, you are missing out. Tillamook is an Oregon creamery known for their cheese and other wonderful dairy products. The ice cream is no exception. I believe this was the first flavor I ever tried, and remains one of my favorites.

Caramel Butter Pecan Ice Cream

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33/365: National Heavenly Hash Day

Posted on February 2, 2013 by Midwest Mark

Today is one of the odder food holidays we’ll be celebrating, because there seems to be no general consensus over what, exactly, “heavenly hash” is. It’s described as a sweet confection containing marshmallows, and can refer to candy, ice cream, cake, cookies, brownies, rice pudding, or ambrosia. I even came across a recipe for a heavenly hash martini. So, I guess, pretty much anything involving marshmallows and fruit, then?

At least it’s not Groundhog Day. I mean, it is Groundhog Day, but at least we don’t have to eat groundhog. Although that would be a lot simpler, and it probably tastes like chicken anyway.

So much confusion reigns that one intrepid blogger contacted several ice cream companies to ask them the difference between Heavenly Hash and Rocky Road (which Wikipedia claims are basically the same thing). The responses are amusing (and still somewhat inconclusive). Rocky Road is a mixture of chocolate ice cream, mini marshmallows, and almonds, while Heavenly Hash is a mixture of chocolate and vanilla ice cream, mini marshmallows, and nuts. Since both Edy’s (Dreyer’s on the west coast) and Ben & Jerry’s agree – and because we’re both slightly hung over and thinking too hard hurts – we’re keeping it simple. We bought a pint of Rocky Road, and we still have leftover vanilla ice cream from our Peach Melba challenge last month. We just mixed the two together and created our own Heavenly Hash. If by definition that’s good enough for the Ice Cream Conglomerates, then it’s good enough for us!

I don’t even have a history on Heavenly Hash (though Rocky Road was created during the Great Depression and its name was meant to make people smile. “We’ve got a rocky road ahead of us.” Ha-ha, yeah, that’s a hoot. Said people jumping to their deaths from tall buildings after losing their life savings in the stock market crash). I guess in that regard, Heavenly Hash is an appropriate name, too…

Heavenly Hash

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15/365: National Strawberry Ice Cream Day

Posted on January 15, 2013 by Midwest Mark

Here’s the latest scoop: today is National Strawberry Ice Cream Day!

Ha. Get it? Scoop? I kill myself.

Ice cream has been around for a very long time. As far back as 3000 B.C., the Chinese served a mixture of snow or ice and juice to their guests. People in the Persian Empire were so enamored with the frozen treat (theirs contained grape juice concentrate poured over a bowl of snow), in the summertime they would trek to the highest snow-covered peaks to bring back baskets of snow. The phrase “don’t eat the yellow snow” became popular after one poor sap mistakenly tried what he believed to be a lemon sorbet, even though sorbets had yet to be invented.

Nowadays, ice cream is a worldwide favorite, and is made with milk and cream instead of snow. Which is a relief, given the whole global warming thing. I’d hate to see ice cream go the way of the dodo bird. Vanilla and chocolate are the most popular flavors, and strawberry is a distant third, with 5.3% of the vote.

There is a very interesting link between strawberry ice cream and aliens. In 1988, a prime-time special on alien conspiracies aired; during this broadcast, two high-level informants said the government had retrieved a crashed UFO, and that the alien on board was fond of strawberry ice cream.

The natural inclination is to assume these guys are crackpots. BUT. I know a guy who used to work at Area 51. True story. He wouldn’t tell me much about it, but did say that the base cafeteria had a wide variety of ice cream flavors available. Makes sense, considering Area 51 is located in the Nevada desert. Anyway, he insisted they always ran out of strawberry ice cream. {Cue dramatic music}. Whether this was because a captive alien had a jones for the stuff is anybody’s guess – when I pressed him on whether they actually harbor aliens there, he got rather cagey and started throwing out words like “top” and “secret” – but it makes for an interesting story nonetheless.

Hey, one bite counts!

Hey, one bite counts!

ET may like strawberry ice cream, but neither Tara nor I are particularly fond of it. We weren’t looking forward to eating a bowl of the stuff, but then we remembered our official rules stipulate we must merely try a single bite of the celebrated food du jour. Why not just walk into Baskin-Robbins and ask for a taste of their strawberry ice cream? We did, and they were more than happy to scoop some up on a tiny plastic pink spoon and pass it over the counter.

The proprietor looked at us oddly when I started taking pics, and I was ready to mumble my “we’re doing a project” excuse, but he never asked. Just in case, we bought a couple of pints of non-strawberry ice cream in order to appease him.

We’re nothing if not polite.

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