Yes, there are some issues that capture national interest, particularly in the climate of campaigns and voter interests. Immigration, healthcare, climate change, education, trade wars, national defense, consumer protection. So, yes, I’ll concede that those are important. Sadly lost, however in all of this discussion, and completely overlooked in the presidential debates, are the major dessert issues of our time. Key among those is the debate over ice cream versus gelato. I’m guessing, for example, that Bernie Sanders is a gelato man – icy, steely, angry flavors cutting through. In fact, I can fully believe that he’s satisfied by crushed ice, hold the flavor. Joe Biden is definitely an ice cream man – probably vanilla is his favorite. Elizabeth Warren is an elegant figure, she strikes me as a sorbet person – more than crushed ice, but with a smooth creaminess. Pete Buttigieg is a man of the people, magnanimous and could go either way, though I suspect that in private moments, he’s an ice cream person. I’m going out on a limb here, but I’d speculate that something in the mocha / coffee arena is his favorite. We pretty much know that Donald Trump is fully in with ice cream, hot fudge or caramel sauce, whipped cream on top, three cherries. I can see him now at the dessert bar adding every topping in sight.
The reason that all this comes up is due to a recent outing with our dear friend, Lady Peacock. She has a favored gelato establishment on Newbury Street. My faithful readers are now saying, “of course” out loud, aren’t you? Where else but Newbury Street? To fill in the back story, this is a local establishment for gelato that she tried in London a few years ago, proclaiming it “the best she’d ever had.” When it comes to Lady Peacock and desserts, that’s no insignificant proclamation. So, this past week, we stopped in to give it a try. Lady P had a dish of what can best be described as a quantum mash-up of her favorites – lime-and-basil, black currant, raspberry, salted caramel among others. Apparently it was highly successful, judging by her purring contentment from the back seat.
In the Sunday paper, however, there was a bold, full page – ok, not quite full-page but darned close – announcement of a new ice cream place that has opened in Cambridge. It featured a dish showing about eight different scoops of multifaceted flavors – several fruits, something that looked like kale (it was green so I gave it only momentary consideration), and one with chocolate bits that rather saved the whole thing. It did bring up the conversation that we need to have at some point. The numbers of ice cream flavors have gotten totally out of hand. Growing up, we had a three choices – vanilla (the universal flavor, like vaseline was the go-to medication for any injury), chocolate for the slightly flamboyant, and strawberry for the pretentious. Unless you made on the farm with real strawberries, the flavoring in supermarket ice cream wasn’t terribly accurate in the early days. My mother used to say, “It tastes like cheap perfume smells”. One could purchase all three together in a block, which carried the exotic title, “Neapolitan”. Who knew that residents of Naples liked all three flavors? For the truly fruit-centered, you could get sherbet. Gelato was not a “thing” at that time outside Little Italy, so sherbet was the closest you could come. Eventually, coffee ice cream emerged, along with various members of the Mint family, and then things got out of hand, with stuff getting mixed in. Peanut butter cups, oreos, toffee bits, to the point where sometimes you can’t see the ice cream for the add-ons. By the turn of the 21st century, we were seeing the “creamery” as a place hosting dozens of flavors in buffet-style freezers. This boggled the mind – it was like looking at wall-paper samples. Too many options and sensory overload. These people also gave us way too many toppings. My observation, crafted with precision over the years, is that Americans, given too many choices, slow down to a glacial speed when it comes to making decisions. If you’ve ever stood behind these people in the creamery, you know exactly what I mean. That’s playing out now too among presidential candidates – “Too many names to recognize, so just give me the top two or three.” Once again, I digress.
Which brings us back to the central debate. Gelato claims to have fewer calories and more natural ingredients. All good, I presume. As an enticing bonus, it does not use high-fructose corn syrup. I’m guessing that’s good too, although I never really associated corn syrup in any of these desserts. The subject did come up recently in a beer commercial, which again caught me totally off guard. Really? Some brewers put corn syrup in beer? With gelato, though, the primary ingredient is water. As long as it’s not from the Flint River or overflow from the Mississippi, that’s probably fine. The Mississippi water will have corn in it anyway. Out of nowhere comes the term “sorbetto”. Little sorbet. Ok. That’s rather like the wine industry and their “white zinfandel”. We all knew it was something the marketing people in Napa invented, and that it really was just rose, but what the heck. Now, curiously, we’re back to calling pink wine, “rose”. Ice Cream has the cache of “cream”. It implies richness and calories. The primary delights of life. Lady Peacock did admit that, on a recent trip to the seacoast, she partook of ice cream. She’s able to extend her global vision in her tastes for sweets.
Along the way, adherents to both have their frothy drinks. The gelato camp doesn’t mind dropping into a 7-Eleven for a slurpee. Crushed ice, flavoring added, refreshing on a hot day. I’m not sure what they were thinking with that blue one, but that’s just me. Similarly, I’ve withheld my approval of blue energy drinks. The ice cream people have long been counterattacking with the milk shake, and that’s evolved of late into the frappucccino and the dunkaccino, new refinements from the coffee shop people. I can go with either one when the temperature rises. Somewhere in the process, we had root beer floats, and I believe they went the way of the malt shop and the soda fountain. Just a pleasant memory from “Back to the Future”, until the fine folks at Shake Shack have renewed the spirit of the shake.
All of this leads, I hope, to a national discussion about water versus cream. I know where I stand, but I really hate to impose my views on others. (What am I saying? I do it almost every week. That was a private aside, so pretend you didn’t read it.) My inner voice tells me that gelato, sorbetto, and sherbet have a niche in warm weather. Year-round, however, ice cream is the magic maker. It’s the stuff of dreams, of true sweet satisfaction. It can stand alone or fully support hot fudge or butterscotch. It adds a significant lift to bananas. Children have cranked the old ice cream maker for hours, generation after generation in hopes of a taste treat at the end. The freezer was invented to store ice cream, until frozen vegetables came along and took up valuable ice cream space. Need I say more? I’m thinking . . . . . . .no.
I'm Thinking...No! 