Is there anything more universal than ice cream?  That’s a rhetorical question; I was just thinking how many memories I have tied to it throughout my life, starting long ago and oh so far away…

Like everything in the Soviet Union, our ice cream was *supposed* to be the best.  Of course it seemed that way, because we had nothing with which to compare it, and of course I loved it, because I was a child.  In my town and in my time, we had two kinds, and two kinds only—“creamy” and “plombir”.  The first one cost 13 kopecks and came in a waffle cone; the second one, 19 and in a paper cup.  Both came in one flavor, basically sweet cream (not vanilla; all that is white is not vanilla).  At this point in my life, I would not be able to tell the difference between the two, if I ever did, but the important difference was that if someone had a 20 kopeck coin and someone else had 5 kopecks, or someone had 15 and someone else had 10, you and a friend needed to only come up with one kopeck to get two “creamys”, instantly making it a party.  The constant search for the elusive missing kopeck is a vivid memory of my childhood.  On one particularly desperate occasion, a friend and I contemplated selling her baby cousin whom we were watching for as many kopecks as we needed for a “creamy”, but that is another story for another time…

Once my mother took me to the famous ice cream café Cosmos in Moscow.  Having never had anything more exciting than the above-mentioned, I was significantly overwhelmed by its choices.  I ended up with something covered in chocolate sauce and hazelnuts.  Whenever in doubt, I will always choose hazelnuts, but chocolate sauce and I have never really been friends, whether on ice cream, on waffles, or on anything else.  The buildup to it was greater than the experience itself because I think I expected something life-changing, but instead, like everything else in our Golden Domed capital of that era, it was hectic, harried, preceded by a very long wait in line, and basically ended up a “creamy” in disguise.   

When I was visiting in the waning days of the Indestructible Union, wandering around town with my BFF, I suggested we grab a “creamy” or maybe even a “plombir” for old times’ sake.  Her response?  Ice cream is not always available this time of year.  It was May.  Enough said.

[Fast forward to 2003]  When I was in Kyiv with some clients, I was very hopeful for some tastes of childhood. Our first encounter was with an American-style ice cream cart that sold the same products that you will find in any American convenience store’s freezer—good stuff, but not nostalgic.  But when we encountered a café on Khreshchatyk, my client Peter went inside to investigate, and emerged with several bowls of ice cream—and several forks.  Why not spoons, the rest of us asked, quite logically.  Well, because forks were offered gratis, and spoons cost extra.  Not that Peter could not afford spoons, but it was the principle of the thing.  And this, much more than the taste of the ice cream, was enough to instantly remind us of our shared Soviet past.

Meanwhile, back home in Ann Arbor, Stucchi’s opened in 1986, when frozen yogurt was new and exciting. Most Fridays, I would meet up with my two best gal pals for a scoop of frozen vanilla yogurt with chocolate covered almonds (for me; I did not pay attention to what they had), and then we would head over to my apartment two blocks away and talk about boys until late into the night.  Best times!  And best ice cream, that sadly went the way of my beloved Breyer’s Vanilla Chocolate Almond Swirl Ice Cream. https://oldladywriting.com/2022/01/29/murder-at-the-marsh/

Another college memory is a weekend field trip to Barcelona during my study abroad in France.  That weekend deserves a story of its own, but at one point, my classmate Lavonne and I discovered a brand of push pop that all these years I thought was called Calypso—but brief internet research revealed that the name is Calippo.  It was some kind of tropical flavor that must have contained crack, because Lavonne and I spent all of our pesetas and most of our time scarfing it down all over town.  No one else in the group was affected by this temporary weekend madness.  I know, it was not technically ice cream, but it was a frozen treat that deserves to be included.

There was also a couple of ice cream producing events which, while I would hesitate to classify as fiascos, were less than entirely successful. One of my selfsame besties owned (maybe still does) a hand-cranking wooden bucket of sorts in which you can make ice cream with the aid of rock salt entirely without electricity.  It was a rigorous exercise, taking turns with that thing.  We lost steam several hours in, at the point of having created a milkshake, earning every calorie we consumed that night.

Another time I made my own ice cream without the aid of the wooden bucket.  Well, it was something about freezing milk and sugar and adding lavender flowers to it. I planted a lavender bush just for this occasion, eagerly waited for it to flower, and was way too impatient to grind them into the milk.  It was flavorful, and entirely too chunky and raw, and one time was enough.  Not too many, but unequivocally enough. And the bush has since died, though from causes unrelated to ice cream.

Honorable mention goes to the Hӓagen Dazs store at the now defunct Smith Terminal at Detroit Metro Airport.  My mom and I had a tradition of getting a scoop of Rum Raisin, to which I added going to the neighboring bookstore and buying an Agatha Christie mystery before getting on a plane.  By the time I returned after a few years away, the ice cream shop was gone, then the bookstore, then the entire terminal. Some things have certainly improved in this particular airport, there is no question about that, but I do miss this special custom of my younger days.

The most delicious ice cream I ever tasted was in Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen.  I took a break from my steady diet of brie and borrelnootjes and treated myself to a scoop before ducking into Madame Tussaud’s (I NEVER miss a wax museum.  Ever.).  It is difficult to recall what was so special about it, other than the almost celestial creaminess.  I still think of it as a transcendent experience.  I have known other people who have traveled to Copenhagen, and no one ever corroborated this.  If I ever make it there again, right after visiting the Royal Treasury which I could not afford to see last time, I will go in search of this amazing ice cream.  Or maybe not, because I cannot bear to be disappointed…