Ice cream news round-up, week of July 31: Lindsay Lohan, ice cream in Vegas and Canada, ice cream man molester

Here are some headlines from the world of ice cream: Lindsay Lohan has been demanding Ben and Jerry's ice cream in jail. If you're smart enough to get a business degree from Harvard, you're smart enough to get yourself a job as an ice cream sommelier. A look behind-the-scenes at the Ben and Jerry's factory in Vermont. Every parent's worst nightmare: an ice cream man inappropriately touches a 5-year-old girl in Denver. The L.A. Times has a round-up of unusual ice cream options in Las Vegas, including a foot-tall, $1,000...

Professional Foray #4, Blue Marble, Brooklyn, NY

Wednesday night, after an excellent meal at The Grocery on Smith Street with my genius friend/professional hero Michelle Goldberg, we hopped on our bikes and headed down Atlantic Avenue to the Blue Marble Ice Cream shop.  This location has more flavors than the one on Court Street.  We almost missed our chance, since the kindly chef at The Grocery, who spends so much time in the dining room you'd think he wishes...

The Hamptons, Redeemed: Professional Foray #3, Sip n' Soda, Southampton

After a disappointing morning cone at the Candy Kitchen in Bridgehampton, it was with some trepidation that I approached Sip n' Soda in Southampton.  Like the Candy Kitchen, it's also a luncheonette, and like the Candy Kitchen, it also claims "homemade ice cream."  Even more suspiciously, their menu also featured "Fresh Peach," which set off red flags.  Was this just another ye olde time-y ice cream shoppe...

From the NYT magazine: Humphry Slocombe

When I was in San Francisco over the New Year, I got waylaid by the Malted Vanilla with Peanut Brittle and Milk Chocolate Pieces at Bi-Rite Creamery, so I never made it to Humphry Slocombe, although I did fill a buy-ten-get-one-free card in less than 72 hours.  This NYT magazine article from last month makes me think another visit to the West Coast might be in order, though... Still, Godby has drawn a loyal following...

Dispatches from the Frontline #1, A Yakult Classic: ultimate summertime slushies

A Yakult Classic: ultimate summertime slushies, by Mona: Yakult! Have you heard of it? Well the first thing you should know is that it is pure delight when consumed frozen and on its way to thawing into a puddle of slushy goodness. Now, I recognize that slushies aren't ice cream per say...however, when you're resident in an small Chinese city where ice cream isn't part of the local food culture (as I am this summer)...

Professional Foray #2, Candy Kitchen, Bridgehampton

This place stinks: Stinking place According to one of the teenagers working there, it's been there since 1925, and I remember it from being in elementary school and going to Amagansett every weekend with my friend Liz.  The bus that we took from Manhattan dropped us off right across the street, and it always seemed like a great place.  Unfortunately, their ice cream is mediocre (to be generous).  The...

Call me a conservative

Most people who know me would not describe me as "conservative."  Something about ice cream, though, needles my Glenn Beck instincts and brings out the reactionary Tea Party member in me.  Foie gras ice cream, for example, is innovative.  But it does not sound delicious.  Rather, it sounds heinous.  Likewise the caviar flavor.  Has anyone tried these flavors?  You can get them in different...

Proustian moments #2, from Mona

This memory comes from one of my top food-nerd friends (and one of my favorite people on this green earth), Mona.  She is also on assignment as my new Asia correspondent.  You can read about her food adventures in China thus far (and I highly recommend you do) here.  And without further ado, I present Mona's ice cream memory: I'll never ever ever forget the first time I had strawberry ice cream. It was...

Ice cream in the news: the business of ice cream

Time magazine reports that despite the recession, "the ice cream market appears to be hot."  Apparently more people are asking for double scoops, too, instead of single.  Is that because there are a lot of obese people not watching their figures, or because ice cream is simply too delicious to only take one flavor at a time?  Probably the latter. This? The New York Times also had an ice cream business...

Proustian moments #1, from Olivia Snaije

The first installment in a series of ice cream recollections.  This one comes from my friend Olivia, a writer in Paris.  When I first sent her this blog, she immediately shared this: Cioccolato con panna is one of my favorites I grew up in Rome, not the chic new pedestrian Rome, but the old Rome with cars and motorcycles zipping all over. Besides a few dreary months during the winter, it seemed to me as...

Nothing to do with ice cream but...

The news has been filled with this report of an Israeli court finding a Palestinian man guilty of rape for lying about his religion (he claimed he was Jewish) and having consensual sex with a Jewish woman.  Can you imagine how the world's prisons would overflow if obtaining sex under false pretences was really a prosecutable crime?  What a strange precedent to s...

Professional Foray #1: The Odeon's ice cream cart

Last night my friend Helen and I went on my first professional tasting trip last night, to the Odeon's ice cream cart.  Thank you to my friend Maisie for sending the tip, by the way.  Helen, who had graciously arrived for dinner carrying a six-pack of Baked by Melissa nano-cupcakes, cheerfully accepted that our dessert was going to have more courses than our dinner. What a delicious little gimmick. The Odeon's...

Obama's racist ice cream

Credit: www.mdiic.com Boy, is this stupid: Right-wing bloggers are attempting to spin Obama's ice cream outing with his family in Maine as an attempt to energize his  Black Panther base via subliminal messaging coded in an ice cream logo from a store run by, as the CBS news article above points out, a white lady in a state with an almost non-existent African-American population.  This is presumably the same...

National Ice Cream Day 2011

By the way, last Sunday July 18th was National Ice Cream Day.  I confess I forgot to observe this holiday with the gravity it deserves, but I did have Ciao Bella cookies and cream gelato the day before and, perhaps because I could secretly sense that Sunday was the big day, I requested a scoop of vanilla gelato to go on top of my iced mocha at Via Quadronno. How did you celebrate? To make up for my offense, I am going to begin planning next year's National Ice Cream Day festivities right now. What should I do? ...

Ice cream kills

Walter Poland, a man with more than a half-dozen DUI's to his name, was driving an ice cream truck when he ran over another man last October in New Jersey.   He was indicted a few days ago.  My condolences to the deceased's family, and shame on Mr. Pola...

Ice cream for dogs. Hmm.

There is a new ice cream truck in London serving dog ice cream.  I'm going to need a few hours to process this before I have something coherent to say about it.  I imagine it keeps them cool.....

Israel v. P-stine, the three-scoop showdown

I was raised on Haagen Dazs ice cream.  My mom served it at dinner parties, and for years it was Haagen Dazs that set the benchmark for what coffee, strawberry, chocolate and vanilla ice cream flavors should taste like.  Throughout elementary school, I started every morning with a diabetes bomb breakfast of champions: a cup of Twinings Earl Grey tea with milk and sugar, topped with a big scoop of Haagen Dazs...

Goodbye Axis of Evil, hello Great Satan: a MidEast ice cream roundup

I recently moved back to New York City, where I was born and raised, from Beirut, Lebanon and Damascus, Syria, where I've been living and working as a freelance writer for the past two years.  I was surprised at how much excellent gelato was waiting for me in New York, but more on that later.  I'll say my goodbyes to Beirut and Damascus with a roundup of a few excellent ice cream places and memories in Lebanon...