If there’s anything I’m prone to do, it’s try really hard to like things.
That instinct has helped me become somewhat adventurous, especially with food. I’ve always loved to eat, but to me, it’s truly a gift to share food with the people that care about it, no matter how unfamiliar it might be at first. It also helps that I have a pretty high tolerance for foods some might turn away from, like extreme hot sauces, full sour pickles, canned sardines in tomato sauce, alligator gumbo, or kangaroo. I could taste almost anything and come out unscathed, and I’m proud of that low-level talent.
As a middle schooler, I started eating mussels and shrimp with my dad at restaurants, even though the rest of my family was kosher and didn’t eat shellfish. Through seafood, my dad and I developed a winking agreement— an in-group with an affinity for slurping mucosal oysters or noshing on whole-fried calamari that others just didn’t understand.
I have done embarrassing amounts of work to genuinely like things that many consider strange, alienating, or crass, just to access a small “in” crowd that gets it. If someone else likes it, there must be something I’m missing. And in the quest to understand, I don’t give up easily.
I’ve managed to try and fall in love with many things I used to recoil at— olives, raw tomatoes, chopped liver, and canned tuna. In terms of fringe* foods, I’ve left few stones unturned. However, there are a few things I’m still trying to like that are hiding in plain sight. One of those things is (I’m sorry in advance!) ice cream.
*I recognize that when I say “fringe” I’m referring to foods that white Americans might consider so. I’m writing from this point of view because, however unfortunate, it’s how many of us here in the states are raised to view food, including myself. Not everyone will see the same foods as unfamiliar, and racism, classism, the effects of colonization, and other forms of bias are present in our considerations of what defines “foreign” or “comforting” food. Just because a food is unfamiliar to a Euro-centric tongue doesn’t mean it’s not delightful and culturally important to another.
I eat ice cream, I’m not a monster. But I don’t know if I actually like it. I’m just as confused as you, I don’t know how this happened.
This being the tail-end of one of the hottest summers on record, an in-depth exploration of America’s favorite (not to mention the president’s favorite!) cold desserts would be warranted. It all adds up- it’s timely, tasty, affordable, relatable. Sounds fun, right? The only problem is I didn’t actually eat a lot of ice cream this summer. In fact, I couldn’t get myself inside more than 2-ish ice cream places before I started to find reasons to go somewhere else.
I don’t like to feel this way. So I decided to write the article anyway before the summer was up. The first step to liking something, for me, is to analyze it. I can definitely logic my way into a great ice cream article. So let’s try that.
While making this chart, I fell down a rabbit hole of types of ice cream. At first, you think, “yeah, ice cream, the scoopy vanilla/chocolate thing,” but reader, it really is so much more. I didn’t include fried ice cream, ice cream sandwiches, ice cream cake, baked Alaska, or very many regional ice creams on that graphic, but more kept popping into my head every time I went back to revise this article.
The more you look, the more ice cream’s influence expands. Cold flavored cream is absolutely everywhere, all over the world. It’s like bread or dumplings. Ice cream, apparently, pre-dates refrigeration. It’s always existed to cool down whoever’s eating it, and originated from icy drinks known as “sharabt” in Arabic, which eventually became the treat we know as “sherbert” or “sorbet.”
Today, there are so many types of ice cream it’s dizzying. Besides all the above types (which I would consider “genres,” like frozen yogurt, gelato, sorbet, italian ice, soft serve, and shaved ice, there are also brands that resemble artists within a genre.
Maybe then, to continue the analogy, every ice cream experience, such as a child’s frozen yogurt combination crafted at a 16 Handles, is like a song.
Although it’s fun to look back on any object’s history, especially when that comes with nostalgia and some very aesthetically pleasing marketing design, I’m still searching for a certain passion that I know I lack.
Nic, historic lover of ice cream, feels very differently than I do. His first job was scooping Argentinian-style ice cream at the Greenwich village Cones, and his passions have led him to finish Talenti pints before I’m even aware of their existence in the freezer.
“It’s a really wonderful treat. It’s just delicious. Maybe it’s Freudian. A hard scoop of ice cream is kind of like suckling a teet. The milk literally comes out. This is off-the-record by the way.” - Nic Recalde, known ice cream enjoyer
Knowing my New York ice cream adventure had turned out to be a failure, I was lucky to be joining my family on our vacation to Spain, where my ice cream consumption jumped from almost none to at least one ice cream per day.
In Europe, especially if you’re a tourist, ice cream is king. And in general, food portions are smaller, food quality is higher, and it’s overall much cheaper. Also, Spain in summer is really, really hot. They are not fucking around over there.
It felt rewarding to eat an ice cream when I had spent the day walking up and down stairs in oppressive heat, working hard on making memories to last me years. As a matter of fact, all food felt much more guilt-free, just because when am I going to have authentic Spanish tapas and desserts again? Plus, I’m walking so much more now it doesn’t even count! Maybe ice cream isn’t so bad…
Uh oh.
Is that… DIET CULTURE rearing its ugly head? I thought I had built an impenetrable fortress between me and that evil scourge long ago! Oh my god, IT IS!
Oh fuck. Yeah, cultural reasons may also be in the way of me never eating this food at home. I think there is a slight bit of ice cream stigma out there that may have penetrated my painstakingly crafted iron shield of anti-diet dogma.
There’s a lot of “sad woman eating ice cream” imagery that was very popular at an impressionable point in my youth.
Ice cream, espeically for women, is associated with breakups, depression, unattractiveness, and sexlessness. Desserts in general, honestly. And actors are always talking about how they ate ice cream to quickly gain weight for roles in movies.
There are emotionally neutral reasons I’m not a huge fan of ice cream. I’ll always like savory things more than sweet things (I’m the eat hot chip and lie gf), and desserts like chocolate lava cake and fruit tarts come before ice cream in my book. I don’t really crave it so much anyway, and that’s ok. But, as a little side note, I think I have always been a little afraid of being seen eating ice cream for fun. Eliminating the chance of someone seeing me do it while across the Atlantic proved to increase my ice cream intake much more than I expected.
Despite uncovering that concerning little factoid in Spain, I continued to work rigorously against its influence in search of the opposite of guilt— joy.
If you separate the incredibly problematic “guilt-free food” side of it all, it kind of is nicer to eat ice cream in Spain. For one, I like that most of it is gelato- I realized I don’t like the milkier American ice cream as much as I like smooth, fruity gelato flavors. It just makes my mouth feel happier. Also, eating ice cream on vacation rules. Like, there’s no place I have to be, I’m just here to enjoy myself. And ice cream is a treat that takes a minute to eat.
Plus, we got into a groove of ice cream being something we all ate together at the end of the day. It became a fun bookend to each new place we went to, where we all were required to shut the fuck up and eat our little cones.
It was great to find some pleasure in something I don’t normally eat. But the temporary enjoyment felt tinged with sadness, knowing when I returned home my relationship with ice cream would go back to almost nothing.
I had failed at finding more than a fleeting interest in ice cream, which felt unlike myself. But I’m not sure if there’s all that much to mourn. It’s not a personal failure that I don’t like ice cream so much. I just don’t crave it, unless it’s a really hot day and it’s citrusy.
I love to love. I want to like everything, and I get really sad when I can’t. I want to be in on the secret, and I use a huge amount of energy and reason to access the happiness other people seem to squeeze out of the world. But in the end, many of the things I do aren’t because I’m particularly excited about the experience, but because I want to share a passion with others. When I realized trying new foods could be a means toward social acceptance, I started eating things not so that I could have the personal satisfaction of trying them, but to see the spark in someone else’s eyes when they realize they’re not alone in their love for something. The very instinct to try and maximize my enjoyment of all things on this green Earth may have caused me to lose connection with things that bring me joy for my reasons alone. Have I developed a sense of taste around others’ approval? Do I even like oysters anymore??
I think the question I’m agonizing over is why I enjoy things, whether its the good, ethical sort of pure enjoyment or a malicious, socially manipulative pleasure. But ultimately, shouldn’t I gravitate towards joy, no matter what? Ice cream itself may not bring me joy on its own, but it’s a perfect cherry on top of a hot, productive summer day of exploration and family.
Why do we enjoy things? Is it bad to enjoy something too much, too little, or for the wrong reasons? I don’t know, and I don’t care.