neo-neocon » Blog Archive » First sign of spring: ice cream in New…

In NH, ME, and Eastern MA at least, a frappe is with ice cream, a milk shake without. Has been for years.

It can be hard to run down a good coffee frappe these days. I keep hoping to find some place that will make ’em with Herrell’s espresso ice cream (Steve Herrell founded both Steve’s and later Herrell’s, BTW). Most older places will still do you a black & white, though.

SlippicanCottage: another punchline to a similar joke is “Just becahz the cat had her kitt’ns in the oven doesn’t mean I’d call ’em biscuits.”

So it seems like fall if you look at the ground. But it has felt like late Spring or early Summer for weeks now, temperature-wise.

Of course, by that time the ice wasn’t harvested ice. The California icehouses were all very high on the mountain lakes, especially the Sierras. They not only supplied ice for home use but were instrumental in the growth of California’s fruit and vegetable industry along with the insulated, ice chilled, railroad “reefers”.

Huge trains with many immense steam locomotives would crawl over the mountain passes shipping our fruit to eastern markets. I can remember looking at our winter Navel oranges and thinking, “Whose Christmas stocking will you wind up in?”

Many of them never got any further than that since everybody carried a “fruit knife” in those days, especially kids who knew the bearing cycles of every non citrus fruit tree in the neighborhood. Is there anything better than slicing sunwarmed Royal Blenheim apricots into the can of the ice cream maker anticipating the taste of the product? And, then sharing the dasher with your brother as a reward for grinding away at the crank.

I think this is one of the best pieces I’ve read on the net in a long while.

As I haven’t had time to read each comment carefully, forgive me if someone has already said this: spring starts in March because March 20 is (usually) the vernal (spring) equinox, the day when the sun in tracing its imaginary path along the ecliptic crosses from the southern into the northern celestial hemisphere, and we have exactly twelve hours of daylight and twelve of darkness. The cold lingers because of (mostly) the high specific heat of land and (especially) water, which take a while to warm up in the heat of the sun.

Remember Charles DeGaulle’s calling the French nuclear deterrent his force de frappe?

He wasn’t talking about ice cream!

There’s a wonderful passage in Thoreau’s Walden about harvesting ice on Walden Pond, if I remember correctly.

Jamie Irons

I suspect the ice cream thing goes back to when we were the corner of the world with the corner on both ice and cream. All regional delicacies generally go back to a time when you ate it because it’s what you had handy, and became traditionized.

This caught my eye:

“After all, I’m not a New Englander (I’ve only lived here about 35 years or so).”

There’s a great story I vaguely remember, used to illustrate the insularity of the folks hereabouts, especially Martha’s Vineyard. It’s true, I think.

A woman was born on board a ship moored just offshore Martha’s Vineyard that was bringing her family to live there. She was brought ashore the next day, lived her entire very long life on-island without ever leaving, raised a large family, and was generally a pillar of the community. When she finally died, her eulogist began:

“She wasn’t from around here, but…”

Keep your calendars open for Sunday, March 18th, at 11 AM for the first annual Pancakes for Mohammed, peace be upon Her, Sunday Pancake Fundraiser at Dennys. This is a great way to raise money for our Islam saving cause while eating great pancakes. And remember, “Hold the sausage please!”

For those of us who are trying to convince our Muslim brothers and sisters about the true gender of the Prophet, peace be upon Her, come out and speak up and bring a few shekels to donate. Also, be sure and bring your best drawing of the Prophet, peace be upon Her. I propose that each group vote on the best depiction of the Prophet, peace be upon Her and pay for the winning artist to eat for free.

Now remember, drawing the Prophet with a bomb on Her head has already been done, so please, choose something else.

http://mohammedpeacebeuponherisawoman.blogspot.com/

And what could be more strange than eating ice cream in the New England “spring” (known locally as “mud season”)? How about eating ice cream in the Russian winter?