Headline, March29, 2013

'''ICE CREAM BELLS'''

Let me delight with you a joke over some great Ice-cream: A farmer is driving a cart full of manure past an asylum. One of the inmates peers through the bar and says, 'Hey, farmer, what you goona do with all this horseshit?'

'Put it on my strawberries,' the farmer says.

'I guess that's why I am here. I always put cream on mine.'

Hahaha!

In most countries of the world, Ice-cream has long been relegated to the backroom eating, fit only for the young, simple or the undiscerning. This is due, in part, to the industrial manufacture of Ice-cream everywhere. In the western world, they tolerate nondairy fat -which one may like to imagine comes from pigs or palm trees, but which certainly wouldn't figure in the Ice-cream of other countries. Many enjoy fishing a choc-ice out of the bottom of the petrol station freezer as much as the next fellow, but Ice-cream really ought to be made only from milk, cream, eggs, sugar and natural flavourings.

The gourmet -or adult- Ice-cream boom was launched in 1960 in America with the Haagen Dazs brand. Sainsbury's began selling a limited range of Haagen Dazs in 1989, proving there must be more than a few people willing to pay nearly £ 5 a pint for the real thing.

The followed up development of the electric Ice-cream maker and freezer by the Italian firm Gelato Chef has launched a thousand new flavours in middle class homes and some better restaurants. Ice-cream now figures regularly on menus for the discerning palate  -sometimes faita in casa, sometimes bought-in from specialist manufacturers. But many go for the dense sock-you-in-the breadbasket-style of American Ice-creams like Haagen Dazs, but more traditionally European palates may prefer the airier, less aggressively flavoured products like those from Losely Farm.

England for sure is behind in the Ice-cream eating habits, and the British also seem to ignore it when the weather is cool. Ice-cream is not necessarily a hot weather dish. Digesting something so sold actually raises body temperatures, which may go some way in explaining why Ice cream is so popular in places like Boston and Moscow.

And the world thinks that nor is British ice cream eating etiquette highly advanced. Cornets are best for the peripatetic, but should always be of the crisp 'sugar cone' variety. Ice cream is also one of the few foods which it is not icky to eat on the hoof. However, at table it should be eaten out of a shallow bowel.

Ice cream may be eaten in bed straight out of the carton: although everybody should use his own spoon!! Hahaha!

With special dedication to this great discovery and invention called: Cold comfort food.

Good Night & God Bless!

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless