The, I'll Have A Cherry & Whipped Cream With 3 Scoops Of Ice Cream Under It!" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Cool, but not cold; breezy, but not windy; great day for a bowl of ice cream, as always.  A week ago I bought a 1.75 quart of Dutch Farms "Bullwinkle" ice cream made by Nelson's.  It was vanilla with peanut butter cup and fudge in it.  Had a sale on it at our local grocery store and being that it was about a half-inch taller container than most others, I fell for the deal for only $2.50.  Was it any good?  Well, the best part of it was that it had an extra serving in the container than most other ice cream containers have today.  Other than that, I doubt if I would buy it again.  I do have a few favorites, with plain vanilla being my all time favorite, since I can have fresh peaches on it in the fall, strawberries on it in the spring, chocolate syrup on it anytime, etc., etc., etc.  

It was said that Alexander the Great also enjoyed snow and ice flavored with honey and nectar.  Nero Claudius Caesar frequently sent runners into the mountains for snow so he could flavor it with fruits and juice.  When Marco Polo came on the scene in Italy about 1,000 years ago, he had a recipe that is very similar to what we now call sherbet.  This recipe was tweeked until it somehow looked and tasted like what we call ice cream today.  About the same time in history, England came up with about the same product as our ice cream.  But, it was called "Cream Ice" and Charles the Ist loved  the dessert.  France was introduced to a frozen dessert in 1553 by the Italian Catherine de Medici when she married Henry II of France.  By 1660 the general public was enjoying the cool treat.  Sicilian Procopio had a recipe he made by blending milk, cream, butter and eggs at the Paris Café Procope.  But, it wasn't introduced to the United States until 200 years before I was born in 1944 when the Governor of Maryland's guest, William Bladen made it for him.  On May 12, 1777 the New York Gazette published an advertisement that Philip Lenzi sent to them that announced that he had ice cream on a daily basis.  In 1790 President George Washington ate nearly $200 worth of ice cream during the summer months ($5,611.20 worth in today's economy).  It was about this time in history that insulated ice houses were invented and in 1851 a Baltimore milk dealer began making and selling ice cream. Then, in 1874 the American soda fountain shop opened and "Soda Jerks" all over the country went to work making ice cream sodas.  Many religions criticized their congregations for eating the "sinfully" rich ice cream sodas on Sunday so the Soda Jerk began to leave out the soda water on Sundays and the ice cream Sundae was born!   

Do you remember the Good Humor Truck?

During WWII ice cream became an edible morale symbol for our troops.  Even our war ships got into it with the "floating ice cream parlor."  Ice cream production has been constant since that time.  In Italy there is an annual Gelatimo ice-cream festival every year in Forno di Zoldo.  This past year Dimitri  Panciera achieved the Guinness World Record when he piled an incredible 121 balls of ice cream onto one cone.  The rules state that the cone can be no greater that 3.74 inches in diameter and that once the scoops have been placed on the cone, they must remain on the cone without falling for 10 seconds.  Now that's something I'm going to have to begin practicing for so I can enter it next year.  Hey...someone will break the record sometime...why not me (but not with "Bullwinkle" flavor).  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.

In 2014 I took my grandson, Caden, to a local ice cream dealer and we made our own flavor.

This is Dimitri Panciera with his prize winning ice cone of 121 balls of ice cream on it.
Guy looks to skinny for eating ice cream as much as it looks like he does.