At Northwestern University, the history department was quite good and there were several professors who had famous lectures. Wiebe — did I really summon that name from my memory banks? — performed a 19th century melodrama that was intended to showcase, um, I’m no longer sure. Family relations?
Henry Binford did ice cream. Evanston, after all, was home of the ice cream sundae, a WCTU (Women’s Christian Temperance Union) alternative to those sinful, fizzy sodas. And IIRC (the Memory Project’s official acronym), Cuba or Russia or some other Communist country once announced with great fanfare that it had developed 32 flavors. At which point, Baskin Robbins had to point out that it had more than 31; hadn’t the Communists noticed that some flavors (Oregon Blackberry, for example) rotated?
I love Baskin Robbins and it has all but disappeared from the Baltimore landscape, although it can be found in those strangely synergistic roadside venues, the ones that combine gas and Dunkin Donuts and Taco Bell and Baskin Robbins into one all-purpose stop. But I want the skinny little shop on Route 40 where I always got the same thing. (No surprise to anyone who knows me.) Then again, my perpetual order was chocolate chip and orange sherbet, which strikes me as somewhat adventurous.
I don’t get modern ice cream. Too hip (Ben & Jerry’s), too self-consciously gourmet. I yearn for Nutty Buddies and those Good Humor Almond Toffee things, but only if you can buy them from a white truck driven by a man named Johnny.
So, what’s your favorite flavor? Brand? Place?
I’m a bigger Dairy Queen fan. I love the blizzards. Chocolate Ice cream with M&Ms. Hmm, I think I’ll go get one now actually.
Well, the term “31 flavors” made me think of my daughter, who is grown now, teaching Geometry (yikes, I’m more of a word nerd myself). She always got things a little twisted as a child. She called it 13 flavors.
On our trips to Baskins Robbins in Denver (any one we could find), she loved Mint Chocolate Chip. My son ordered chocolate. As for me, I always got and still get Praline’s and Cream.
I still dream about Haagen Dasz’s Honey Vanilla ice cream, which I believe they stopped making in the 1980s. And my favorite childhood treat at Fenway Park was a stick-less “Sports Bar” with chocolate ice cream sandwiched between vanilla ice cream and dipped in chocolate — yum!
I blame dental anxiety for the typos in my post above. Two parfaits per year.
Although I think a case could be made for “Peanut Buster Parfait” as a verb, similar to my friend’s coinage of “felafaling.” (“Do you want to felafal for lunch?” “Yes, let’s go felafaling.”)
By the way, combining mint chocolate chip with codeine pretty much ruined that flavor for me until I found that there were non-green versions of mint chocolate chip. (More dental adventures.)
Friendly’s mint chocolate chip. It’s been my favorite since I was a kid, and still is. I spent a summer working at Friendly’s, after I graduated college and was contemplating my future, and mint chip got me through.
I do have to add that this summer I’ve been indulging in the Good Humor toasted almond bar at our swim/tennis club. When I was in college, there was a drink called a toasted almond that tasted exactly like them. I drank them then, but the thought of it now is just too gross. Just give me the ice cream…
When I was a child there was no Dairy Queen or any other chain ice cream or any other kind of chain store. I lived a lot with my grandparents in Concord, Californis as a child and across the street from their house on Willow Pass Rd was a real creamery with nothing but ice cream. That was probably the very first store that was dedicated to ice cream. (mid to late 1940s). The building was so beautiful with glass brick walls that curved at both sides of the entrance.
Later in life I also loved Baskin Robbins and they used to carry my all time favorite flavor, black raspberry which I never see anywhere anymore. I used to have dark chocolate on the bottom and the BR on the top of cones, yummmmmmmmmmm.
Now, here in Anchorage there is a store called ColdStone and they make their own ice cream and have these large apothecary type jars with numerous kinds of things to add in to whatever flavor of ice cream you want. I like their rich vanilla ice cream with macadamia nuts and pineapple mixed in. It’s a treat to watch them work the stuff into the ice cream on the cold stone for which the place is named. And the ice cream is to die for. But they have not had Blackraspberry either. I guess I’ll have to go on my memories of it from here on I just hope it doesn’t fade away into the ether and I won’t ever think of it again.
I’m pretty much house bound now so I go for the good stuff I can get my shopper to find like HagenDas dark chocolate covered chocolate ice cream bars. Somebody, can’t remember the brand makes a swell chocolate with a swirl of peanut butter in it.
Just back from the dentist with a sore mouth, and all these ice cream stories are torture!
Growing up, we had Turtle Pie from Baskin Robbins as dessert for most occasions. It’s this amazing combination of cookie crumb crust, Pralines and Cream ice cream caramel sauce and gooey chocolate swirls. It’s so sweet that you can only eat a small piece, but it’s oh-so good.
We recently bought an ice cream maker and have been making our own concoctions at home. With some fresh fruit and just 2 or 3 other ingredients, we’ve managed to make some really good ice cream and sorbet. Yum!
The biggest treat for us was to go to Cone City after dinner. Soft ice cream was just too cool for words on a hot summer evening.
Haagen Daz makes a Dulce de Leche (caramel) that is orgasmic…you’ll “get” gourmet after a mouthful of that stuff. Damn, now I’m gonna have to go get a couple of pints!
Laura, there is still a skinny BR store at the St. Thomas Shopping Center in Owings Mills. Have any of you from the greater Baltimore area discovered Carmen’s? There are several around. Steve started with soft custard and ices that are very good but has progressed to his own ice creams, along with mix-ins if you wish. I think his butter pecan is to die for but he must not be getting many requests because I haven’t been able to get it for a month or so. If I do find it, I will buy quantities for the home freezer. June
Karen’s toasted almond Good humor was my sister’s passion. We too had the Good Humor Man in our Hartford neighborhood, as well as Mr. Softee (don’t GO there!) who was my hero – the soft ice cream truck which NEVER came around often enough. I guess he was like DQ on a truck. There was also a local dude who sold, I guess, off-brand stuff but he was popular in summer for whatever they were – Italian ices I guess – that we just called “lemonice”, one word in my memory. I liked creamsicles, fudgsicles things with chocolate.
Connecticut summers being what they are, my mom and I still reminisce about that summer day when we had Good Humor bars or one of those guys for lunch and then went to Friendly’s or one of those guys and had sundaes for dinner. That was food for the day.
I don’t remember Friendly or Farm Shop flavors, though they were childhood hangouts. And I wish I could remember where I had the best mint chocolate chip which is another idea of heaven. The place near my mom in West Hartford until recently had butterscotch sundaes but I think they stopped dong that and offer caramel sundaes; GREAT for my huge ice cream sweet tooth but not the same.
As a college student I was once with a young girl who looked at me as sort of okay, but I KNEW she liked me the day we went to Baskin Robbins and she offered me a taste of that vile horrid awful crap; they sold – the “bubble gum” ice cream. I was honored by her offer; it was exactly as bad as I feared.
Cambridge was the BEST place to be an ice cream head; between Herrell’s and Toscanini’s, there was no greater heaven; Herrell’s orange chocolate was so fine that the day I got a job after moving there, i celebrated with an entire hand-packed pint of the stuff. Can you tell I’m not much of a drinker? Toscanini’s – grapefruit sorbet, and cinnamon/nutmeg ice cream. Oh swoon.
But I ADORE the new high butterfat trendies – B&J’s and I buy whoever is on sale; seems that HD and B&J alternate weeks here. B&J NY Super Fudge Chunk has things in and I like ice cream with things in, even to teh of buying Chunky Monkey at times; but HD’s Dulce de Leche is my idea of orgasmic heaven. And I didn’t even SEE that Linda used the same adjective until just this second when I looked up. There’s a QUART of it in my freezer – ok,what’s LEFT of a quart, bought I dunno 5 days ago?
Memorable Sunday outings on the Southwest side of Chicago in the 1950s were when my parent’s would load the four of us into our big ol’ car and off we’d go to Midway Airport to park and watch planes taking off and landing, right over our heads. Once my Dad was able to arrange for us to actually sit inside an airplane – and in the pilot’s seat! (He worked for NW Airlines at that time.) We were beyond thrilled.(Okay, we were easily amused in those simpler times
But the real high point of these days was what came after — our weekly visit to “The Original Rainbow Cones”! ..a local treasure that is still in business today after 80 years..
An original rainbow cone is a frozen masterpiece comprised of five slabs, not mere scoops, of homemade ice creams. When you see one straight on, the layers are diagonally situated atop a crispy sugar cone. First comes the rich chocolate, second is the strawberry, then pistachio. On top of these is a special creation called ‘Palmer House’- creamy vanilla studded with cherries and big walnut chunks. Topping off this extravaganza, and my favorite layer, orange sherbet. Believe me, it doesn’t get much better than this… yum.
I love Dairy Queen with an unbridled passion.
When I was little, before the DIVORCE, my Mom worked at a pencil factory, and my Dad would take me to the Dairy Queen for lunch on Saturdays. He would get a foot long chili dog, I would get a hamburger, as well as a cherry Mr Misty and a strawberry sundae.
Later, when I was much older, my first boyfriend took me to Dairy Queen after we went to the movie, and I had a Cherry Mister Misty, and he had a hot caramel sundae — and when he was done he kissed me for the first time, and there was just a tiny taste of the sundae on his lips. All kisses should be that good!
Anyway, there is only one Dairy Queen here now – at least only one that isn’t in a gas station.
Oddly enough, I just had my first taste of chocolate chip and orange last week, VERY ADVENTUROUS, and somewhat yummy
Ah, now we’re talking.
Baskin-Robbins was such a staple of my childhood. There was this standalone store in Ottawa’s South End that my parents would drive us to every now and then. Loved it — the twistable seats, the 31-derful flavors (though I was always on the lookout for Boysenberry because it was such a strange name and they *never had it*) and of course, my favorite flavor of all, Chocolate Fudge (though Chocolate Mousse Royale came pretty damn close.)
The store’s still there, at least the last time I checked, but it seems neglected now. Everyone’s moved on and to tell you the truth, so have I. If I had to choose I’d go for gelato now (Piccolo Grande, or the other place in downtown Ottawa that was started by PG’s owner, but the name escapes me now. So, so good.)
Baskin Robbins Pralines ‘n Cream was wonderful. There is still at least one stand alone BR in Denver but I haven’t been there in years. The best ice cream I ever had was from the Jackson All Star Dairy in Jackson, MI. Their Fudge Ripple was to die for and a single cone had two huge scoops on it.
Baskin-Robbins will always hold a place in my heart. To this day, I get an ice cream cake every year for my birthday with Gold Medal Ribbon ice cream, the best out there. No nonsense, vanilla/chocolate/carmel ribbon.
I still count the “smell” of Baskin-Robbins among my favorite smells in history. Right up there with burning leaves.
Evanston now has a Marble Slab Creamery which has a line out the door every time I walk by. Now THAT is gourmet ice cream of the chain-store variety.
O’Dowd’s Dairy in Jersey during the ’60s. Black cherry ice cream in a paper cup with a wooden spoon. Heaven.
Now we get handpacked ice cream from Maple View Farm (www.mapleviewfarm.com), our local dairy down the road about 4-5 miles. Coffee, chocolate, butternut and vanilla. Sprinkles on the first three, fudge, toppings or sprinkles for the vanilla.
Jeanne
currently sticking to Maple View’s sorbet and Edy’s fruit bars at around 80 cals each to comply with Life Adjustment Plan #368. Which is pitiful and just not right as David spoons down the real stuff.
I’m a big Dairy Queen fan, too, but only the outdoor locations. I allow myself to Peanut Buster Parfairs per year.
Okay, sometimes three.
Christin, it was Swensen’s on Orrington in my day. Of course, this was when Evanston had only one fast-food franchise, BK, where you had to bag it yourself. Evanston is also home of one of my favorite foods ever — the Pizza Turnover at Michelini’s East. I’ve never found anything like it. Calzones are a sad substitute.
And, yes, gelato is now the more likely choice here. But only if I walk all the way to Little Italy for it.
I hadn’t thought about ice cream in a long time. When I first started reading your post, I thought I would probably have nothing to say. And then I remembered I’m from Texas. Oh, yeah. Dairy Queen dipped cones. Hot summers playing in the hose until the ice cream truck came by. Nutty Buddies, you bet. Eskimo Pies. But for Baskin Robbins, I always got the same thing, too: Pralines N’ Cream.
I think I stopped eating ice cream when I got tired of the cold hurting my teeth.
Growing up in a row home neighborhood we never went out for ice cream, it came to us. The jingling bells of the Good Humor man (never a woman) were fixtures in the alleys of Dundalk. Summer evenings just aren’t the same anymore without hearing dozens of kids yelling “Waaaaiiitttt a minute.”
My personal GH favorite was the orange creamsicle. Oh what a happy day when I attended a wedding reception in the early 1980′s, and tasted my first alcohol laden creamsicle. The GH guy never had those on the truck.
Dreyer’s was and still is my favorite. A childhood (and that was a looong time ago) dream in our neck of the woods was to hijack a Dreyer’s truck. WE had very intricate plans. Only trouble was none of us were old enough to drive. Those were the days when they only had two trucks and a small creamery on College Avenue which bordered the Oakland/Berkeley line-eons before Dreyer’s became the national mega-conglomerate it is today. A Chocolate & Strawberry double decker was my game. Ten cents a scoop and worth every penny! I still make them every now and then – but it just ain’t the same, you know?
Oh my, again the memories. It occurs to me that I can identify the stages in my life by ice cream. Reading your posts reminds me of discrete periods in my life.
Childhood: Definitely orange creamsicles from the Good Humor man in the alleys of Dundalk (with an occasional splurge on a toasted almond, but they cost a nickel more, I think). We didn’t have B&R in Dundalk and I had never been in one until high school. Sadly, by the time I actually got to one, it just didn’t live up to it’s reputation to me (too much anticipation leading to inevitable disappointment).
Early highschool: There was, briefly, an independent ice cream store about a block from the corner of Holabird Rd. and Dundalk Ave. and, happily, its (I think brief) tenure happened to coincide with the high school period when I would have to transfer buses there. It was the only thing that made the long, long wait for the #4 tolerable!
Later high school: My first job was at Friendly’s in Dundalk, starting on its opening day. Other than a brief flirtation with double dips of peppermintstick covered with chocolate sprinkles, I was pretty much cured of my taste for ice cream by the experience of spending my evenings literally up to my elbows in ice cream. (We called chocolate sprinkles “jimmies” until required at Friendly’s to say “chocolate sprinkles.” Of course, the manager who was from New England eventually gave up on that policy when all the customers asked for jimmies.) I still feel stickly when I see a Friendly’s.
Mid-twenties: Rediscovered ice cream on the road to Ocean City. Dairy Queeen, of course. It became a regular stop but I never had or wanted anything but the soft serve cone dipped in chocolate.
But I never really reattached to ice cream until a long time later (even though I’m married to a man who just bought himself a ice cream maker and thinks that ice cream is a required daily food group). I’m now totally and pretty much exclusively a Ben & Jerry’s fan. And, unless it’s a desperate time calling for a really desperate measure, it’s got to be hand dipped. This exclusivity is a good thing for me. I now live in the Rocky Mountains and yet have access to not one but two Marble Slab Creameries. (Actually, I think that they are kind of boring but you can see what a difference 3 or 4 decades makes. As a kid in Dundalk, B&R was unreachable and exotic, now even in the Rocky Mountains gourmet ice cream is just outside the door.) I live for my 2-3 trips a year to Boulder. Whatever my purported destination is, my real purpose is the Ben & Jerry’s on Pearl Street.
That’s it, my life as told by ice cream.
Try the Dulce de Leche… Try the Dulce de Leche…
(We have a lamp in the babies’ room that’s shaped like a duck. Babies like contrast, and it’s the brightest thing in there when the ceiling light is off. “Try the Dulce de Leche” should have the same eerie inflection as “Come to the duck… Cooome to the duck…”)
LL, Oh yes, a field trip is definitely in order. Will have my car at Bcon for this mission and any other intellectual pursuits that capture your imagination..
(Make a list..)
Does any body here remember Carvel?
That’s where we got to go as kids. A drive in place with picnic tables outside. Soft-serve ice cream. Vanilla or chocolate. And toppings, of course.
We had a B&R in a shopping center next to my high school. In younger days it was a real treat when Mom and Dad would take us — chocolate chip and mint chocolate chip, but only in a plain cone for me! Mom always got Burgundy Cherry. Don’t remember what my sisters got. Later, in high school, my two best buddies and I used to take turns treating each other. I expanded my selections, but Jamocha Almond Fudge usually featured in there somewhere.
We didn’t have an official Good Humor man, but did have an ice cream truck that came around the local junior high school. Orange creamsicles and frozen chocolate shakes were the best of the best. I don’t think I’ve ever had a Nutty Buddy, although I do ride a cute Apaloosa of the same name . . .
My ice cream days are fading as lactose intolerance rears its ugly head (thank heavens for lactaid!), but I do hit the Coldstone with my daughter every once in a blue moon (less frequently now that she has officially Moved Away From Home). And I can’t prevent myself from diving into a pint of Cherry Garcia or Dulce de Leche from time to time . . .
When I was a kid the place to go was Dairy Queen. At the time I didn’t even know they had inside versions. My dad worked 70 -80 hours a week which meant that there were a lot of evenings when he would get home and my Mother was ready to commit a homicide, and yes, I was usually to blame….
To chill my mother out he would load the kids into a car and we would disappear for an hour or two. Of vcourse the kids who had been behaving got the big sundaes, I usually got a dilly bar.
We also used to go to Farrells Ice Cream Parlor. Rewards for good grades. I rember eating something called the pig’s trough, about a gallon and a half of ice cream…..
Nowadays I’m happy with Drumsticks.
Gee, I wonder how I ended up walking around the harbor last night and going ot Vaccaro’s. But I showed some restraint — raspberry ice only.
Annie, do we need to make a field trip at Bouchercon? The Palmer House sounds like something I need to try. I mean, as an intellectual pursuit.
If I remember correctly, the Pig’s Trough was a hot fudge sundae consisting of 30 scoops of vanilla ice cream and one quart of hot fudge. You got a prize if you ate the whole thing.
I’ve never been a huge fan of ice cream. Looking at the other comments, it’s probably because I had a lot of cavities as a kid and the cold hurt my teeth. So visiting an ice cream parlor was mostly social for me. My mother liked Baskin & Robbins, so we went there when I was a kid. When I was a teenager, there was a Swenson’s for a few years that was popular. The funny thing was that during my first pregnancy, I had a strong craving for Rocky Road ice cream, and ate it almost daily. The craving ended when my son was 2 days old.
Joh – Carvel yes. Is that a regional thing folks? Do east coast folks know Carvel and others not?
Going back to my childhood in a small North Carolina town…..only way to get an ice cream cone was at the drugstore counters. This was usually a trip in the car after dinner. Choices were basically chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, peach and butter pecan.
The only freezing section in the fridge was the space for the ice cube trays, so when my father brought home a pint for dessert, the trays were moved out while we had dinner. That flavor was usually neapolitan sliced onto plates. I cannot remember when I first saw an actual ice cream store but it would have had to be on a trip to some city while in my late teens.
My current favorite is Ciao Bella. Discovered it a few years ago and its heavenly. The best is to get a cone from one of the stores in NYC. But they also sell pints in a few grocery stores.
Andi, Carvel was definitely East Coast. One of the things I missed when I moved West in 1974. No Carvel. What else…?
Lois, I also craved Rocky Road when I was pregnant! But only after the first trimester; before that, coffe ice cream was one of the few things I could eat (along with watermelon and graham crackers — not all together, though!).
Weird . . .
Funny. Just the other evening we had Carvel softserve cones here in White Plains, NY. Lots of Carvel shops hereabouts. Back home in Chicagoland, however, we have Carvel freezer cases in the (Jewel) grocery stores with yummy frozen ice cream cakes, ice cream sandwiches etc. I’ve never seen a Carvel shop in our northern IL area, though I saw where there’s one opening soon in Wilmette.
(I like Dairy Queen vanilla soft-serve a bit better I think… seems more flavorful to my taste buds than the Carvel. But for scientific purposes, I may go tomorrow and give it another taste test … perhaps I needed to order a larger cone or should have tried the chocolate
Will report back with my findings asap …
John – I moved west in ’76, back to the east in ’85, back west in ’90. One of the few things I miss is real Jewish food; it doesn’t seem to exist outside of LA and i don’t get to southern California very often. My 10 years in the bay area though spoiled me for many things – when I went back east for a while, I could not find decent coffee nor, at least in Boston, brunch restaurants. I’m DEFinitely a west coast type person.