Why Ice Cream?

I’ve loved ice cream ever since I can remember. My childhood memories are filled with the substance.

I’m almost certain I ate ice cream every day as a child up until the age of 13 or 14.

When I was seven, I fell off a horse and got a black eye (a story for another time). To make me feel better, my mom asked me what I wanted to feel better and I asked for the Dove Vanilla with Milk Chocolate ice cream bars. Very specific taste.

My childhood friend Jane’s dad was the first person to introduce me to the famous chocolate and vanilla “twist” at Kevin’s Candy Cone in White Lake, NY. That became my fixation snack for years. We drove past that ice cream stand every day after school and, if soft serve was in season, my mom would stop at Kevin’s and I would order a twist with rainbow sprinkles in a waffle cone. Off season, we’d stop at the gas station and I’d pick up the Nestle King Triple Chocolate Sundae Con (IYKYK).

I stopped eating it every day when I started caring about my looks. The first time I ever felt shame for my ice cream habit was when Michael, a previous owner of the wineshop in Narrowsburg, told me I’d have to stop eating ice cream every day because if I don’t, I’ll get fat. I wasn’t a fat kid and I didn’t care at the time, but his voice echoed the chambers of my skull when I was in the midst of my teenage years.

Years of struggling with disordered eating caused me to give up ice cream for years. It also led me to learn a lot about food and alternative ways of preparing my favorite treats. From “fat free, sugar free” to “dairy free” to “low cal” to “high protein” - there’s an option for virtually everyone, and I’d like to lean into that. The kitchen is my favorite chem lab and ice cream is such a simple and fun experiment. Plain vanilla ice cream is a blank canvas for expression. The ingredients are simple, the science is understood, and the possibilities are endless.

My goal for the year is to combine some of my favorite things - ice cream, creating things, my knowledge of food and food systems, and my passion for knowledge - to create a variety of flavors that feature mainly local & organic ingredients, no refined sugars, no artificial flavors, and tell not only my story but also the story of where our food comes.

P.S. My twitter bio used to be “dairy slut.”