When a Southern Woman Rambles... by L. Avery Brown (best short novels TXT) 📕

Luckily their inability to count did not get in the way of their ability to expertly fill a cone so that never once did one of those giant dollops fall while it was being made. Although once it was handed off to me, all bets were off. When I’d finally get the cone in my hand, I always felt like I was in some mad race to not only eat it before it started to melt and drip down my hand and down to my elbow but to also keep the tasty tower from tumbling off its perch on the cone and subsequently land on the ground.

My father would laugh at my frantic efforts to enjoy my cone and give me his very small, single ply napkin so I could wipe my chin. My dad always . . . and I mean ALWAYS . . . got two - well, four scoops of black cherry and had mastered the ‘side to side head tilt-n-lick’ method a good 50 years earlier (yes, my father was older than most typical dads). And it never failed that sometime during our outings he’d tell me about when he was young and would get to have ice cream. Even then I remember thinking ‘Gosh, he’s so old. That must mean ice cream is super old.’

Of course, as I’ve grown older I have come to realize that the 50ish to 60ish year old age demographic isn’t really that old. But I’ve also learned that ice cream is much older than 50 years. In fact, ice cream or rather ‘frozen treats that on occasion had cream added’ actually dates back 1,000s of years ago.

There are accounts of the wealthiest of the ancient Greeks sending slaves to collect huge chunks of ice from mountain tops (as that’s pretty much the only place that one will find ice anywhere in the Mediterranean area) and then they’d crush the ice and mix it with honey, a common ingredient in Greek sweets. And thanks to writers like Tacitus (The Agricola and Germania), Suetonius (De Vita Caesarum) and Cassius Dio (Romaika), there is even evidence which suggests that like the Greeks, the Romans, specifically the emperor Nero, who as legend says fiddled while Rome burned, had extravagant parties wherein he’d order his slaves to go to the mountains, gather snow and ice, and then run back as quickly as humanly possible with giant chunks and containers of the icy stuff so that it could be crushed and mixed with fruits and juices.

If you were to consider all the slaves needed to bring enough ice down from the mountains to make a sufficient amount of the frozen treat for the great numbers of people Nero invited to dine with him, it’s rather mind boggling, especially when you bear in mind that most of the ice probably melted along the way. But whatever Nero wanted, Nero got because not only was he known for throwing extravagant ‘who’s who’ kinds of parties but he was also known for his quick temper and penchant for executing people.

Lots of people died under Nero’s rule - he even had his own mother executed. So I’ll bet that when Nero served the icy delicacy, everyone loved it and ate it as quickly as possible, no doubt enduring painful brain freezes in the process, for fear that he might have them executed for not enjoying the frigid dessert.

However, to be clear, what Nero and his guests took pleasure in eating wasn’t really ice ‘cream’ as there was no sort of dairy product whatsoever in it. Technically it fits the definition of a sorbet and quite frankly reminds me of a glorified sno-cone. But I suppose it’s all relative because if one serves crushed ice with fruit juice and sugar and puts it in a fancy dish, then one can call it a sorbet. However when shaved ice is served in a cone shaped paper cup and a brightly colored, thick syrup labeled ‘blue raspberry’ (or some equally sweet goo) is pour over it - it’s a sno-cone.

So where did ice cream as we know it today actually come from? The first true iced creams can be traced back to the Chinese who had figured out a way to mix saltpeter (one of the main ingredients in Black Powder . . . a.k.a. gun powder, which was used and is still used today to make fireworks and other explosives) with ice (to help lower the melting point thus keeping it a lot colder for a longer time period), cream and sweet syrups to come up with a creamy, slushy sort of treat that ought to more rightly be called an ‘ice milk’ as opposed to an ‘ice cream’. Now as for how the ancient Chinese secret to ice cream made it to the rest of the world, I suppose we ought to thank Marco Polo of Italy, who wrote of his travels to the Far East back in the late 1200s, for bringing not only the formula for gun powder to Italy and the rest of Europe but also the idea of creamed ice as well.

Bear in mind though, it’s not like the Italians didn’t enjoy sweet frozen treats, they’d just not figured out an effective method for mixing creams with them in a way that they could stay cold long enough to enjoy them. Eventually recipes for the cold concoction popped up all over Europe and some of them were quite disgusting too, like asparagus and beef flavored ice creams. But just as most things go through a process of trial and error, so too did ice creams until they’d been pretty well mastered by the mid-1700s.

In due course, ice cream, the popular creamy cold dessert we know of today, made its way to America and it didn’t take long before ice cream parlors started to pop up in the larger cities. The first ice cream parlor is said to have been started in New York City in the mid-1770s where it was enjoyed by average everyday city folk and visitors. It was such a popular sort of special treat that Thomas Jefferson, the 3rd President of the United States, asked Dolley Madison, Secretary of State James Madison’s wife, to see to it that it was served to visitors to the White House which she did.

Incidentally Mr. Jefferson was a widower and had asked Mrs. Madison to serve as the hostess for all White House functions. One might say Dolley was the de facto First Lady but when her husband became the 4th President she really was the First Lady. And as the First Lady she saw to it that ice cream continued to be served at the White House. But as for the rest of America, ice cream was one of those things that people rarely got enjoy unless they found themselves in the city because it took a good deal of time, effort and ice (which could be stored in cities in large ice houses) to make the stuff.

Though thankfully, to the delight of people across the nation, in 1846 Nancy Johnson designed the first small hand cranked ‘home’ ice cream maker thus ensuring that it could be enjoyed by more people more often. The recipe was simple. All you needed was the cream, sugar, fruit and a few pinches of salt. But even with the small churn you also needed lots of non-stop human cranking power, some rock salt to keep the container cold, and someone was small enough and also willing to sit on the top of the thing while it was cranked because as the cream thickened it took lots of force to turn the crank so someone was needed to stabilize the ice cream churn.

Yes, the process took a lot of time and effort but the end result was well worth it. Unfortunately the churning machines weren’t really large enough to make ice cream in the quantities needed to serve more than a few people at a time so unless you had access to a lot of churns, a lot of strong arms and several people who didn’t mind if their rears got very cold, it was quite difficult to make the stuff which brings me to the good old fashioned summertime ice cream socials that were organized by local churches as a fun way to get people to come together en masse during the summer to produce gallon after gallon of all kinds of ice creams that were served in bowls or in sweet ice cream cones which were introduced in 1904 at the World’s Fair in St. Louis, Missouri, by way of Charles Menches who is credited with creating the modern ‘walk-away’ ice cream cone.

The partnering of ice cream and cones in the early 20th century has been a lucrative collaboration that has lasted well into the 21st century and will no doubt continue for 100s of year to come. As for me, when I grew older, trips to the creamery with my family were ‘totally uncool’ so eventually the trips came farther and farther apart until they stopped altogether. But my love of the stuff never diminished and I still enjoy going out with my husband and daughter to get an ice cream cone on occasion - only I can never seem to find good old fashioned fudge ripple anywhere. Of course, it's rather baffling to me that companies like Ben & Jerry's and Blue Bell Ice Cream (THE. BEST. ICE CREAM. EVER!) ever became successful considering the scoop shop employees still can't count to save their lives!

Breakfast time is one of my favorite times of the day. Let’s face it, there’s nothing quite like waking up to the smell of eggs frying, bread toasting, and bacon sizzling. Of course, your morning menu might vary . . . but the ‘wake up and get a move on’ essence of whatever food it is that you enjoy smelling first thing in the morning is no doubt the same. 

But what is it that makes breakfast different from any other time of the day? After all, the goal of any meal, no matter what time of day, is to nourish the body. Though with breakfast, at least for me, it's a time to also nourish my soul. 

It’s the time of day when smiles and ‘good mornings’ are offered and accepted from passersby without reservation. And for some people that might be the only smile they give or receive for an entire day. What’s more, is that breakfast is served when the news is ‘new’ and when the world seems a little less complicated. Yes, the morning repast is the time of day when one can chat with their friends and loved ones with a sense of hope about the day that lies ahead of them as opposed to grumbling with frustration about the day though which they’ve trudged. 

Needless to say, the time I spend with my family during what I consider to be