Summer, and Real Ice Cream
It’s a glorious summer down here in New Zealand, and in the North Island (where I live) we’ve had weeks and weeks of blue skies, occasional gentle rain and long, hot humid nights.
It’s not completely idyllic.
The northernmost part of the North Island copped the tail end of a tropical cyclone, there was a bit of flooding and roofs were blown off in the 180kph winds.
Most people however, just enjoyed the very good weather.
A favourite way to keep cool is of course to jump into the pool or the sea, and cool off that way, but for a more hedonistic method, you can’t beat a large (and often melting and dribbling) ice cream.
The slight numbness on the tip of the tongue.
The tingling of the gums and teeth. (The screaming pain of the untreated cavities and receeding gums)
The unctuous velvet sweetness of the texture.
The cold developing pit in the centre of your body.
The slight guilt at eating something you know is full of fat and sugar, but you don’t care because it’s just so good.
Well that’s what it should be.
I was back in the UK last month, and I’d forgotten how bad the so-called ice cream is in Britain (and probably the USA as well)
Even though it was winter, we were served with ice cream as a dessert after the meal, and as I dug in, I picked up a strange after taste. It was kind of meaty.
After the meal, as I was doing the washing-up (my beloved has me very well trained) I sneaked a look at the packaging for the ice cream.
In New Zealand, manufacturers are not allowed to call their product “Ice Cream” if it does not just contain Milk, Butter, Cream and sugar (Plus flavours and fruit).
The stuff I’d just eaten contained a whole raft of e-numbered additives, plus the usual “non-dairy” fat, meaning vegetable oils, but it also had non-vegetable fat on the list.
Wow.
The bastards had introduced a method of adding rendered animal fats into ice cream. Think about it, we had been eating processed pork, beef or lamb fat, mixed in with all of the chemical additives, preservatives, colours and flavours.
It shouldn’t be allowed to call this stuff Ice Cream, what about Sweet Cold Fat. That would be a lot more accurate.
I remember as a child in Scotland in the 50s, the only place you could buy ice cream was from a specialist Dairy. There was one near my school, and it only sold milk, cheese, eggs, butter and in summer, Ice Cream. It was absolutely delicious, only available in one flavour, vanilla, and only contained cream, milk and butter and eggs. No colours. No preservatives.
Most families couldn’t make ice cream. Our rather primitive refrigerators only had a very small ice box, big enough to hold an ice tray, a small bag of peas, and maybe a small block of ice cream. Every family I knew bought their ice cream fresh from the Dairy each day they wanted it, or perhaps from the Italian Ice Cream vans that patrolled our suburbs in the summer evenings.
Mass produced ice cream became available in the 60s, was conveniently packaged in cardboard boxes, and conveniently tasted like cardboard. But it would fit into a small ice box, it was cheap, it was sweet, and it contained non-dairy fats. The mass adulteration of our foods had begun. Ending with the addition of rendered beef fat in the 21st century. Isn’t progress great.
Industrial mass produced international branded ice creams do not sell well in NZ, as:
- The locally mass produced product is so good. (Tip Top is the brand leader)
- The local stuff is so cheap (about $2.00 per large cone)
- Most foreign brands cannot even be called Ice Cream, as they do not comply with the regulations for that product.
I’m sure the older readers can remember the glorious flavours of their childhoods, compared even to the high-end commercial brands available now.
Eat more real ice cream.
Forget about the fats and sugars
Just enjoy.
And don’t think I’m having a go at US companies. The biggest culprit in the additional animal fats is a British/Dutch company called Unilever. They specialise in fats and oils, and their biggest selling brand is: WALLS
Actually, reading about the weather up there in the USA, I don’t think you’ll even need a fridge.
I wonder if anyone’s tried to make their own ice cream outside in the giant ice box you all live in at the moment.
Sorry, I have to finish, it’s almost 30°C outside, and I’ll have to go down to the Dairy for more Hokey-Pokey Ice Cream (Vanilla with pieces of sugar honeycomb).
Enjoy
I loved this story. Real ice cream….ahhh. Nothing else like it. Summer day, playing in the sprinkler, cone with ice cream. Does it get any better than that?
What a great read. Now I have to go into town to buy ice cream 🙂