For the love of ice-cream.
As I mentioned in my profile, I am a ice-cream addict. I love just about every single flavour and it is never the wrong time of night or day for me to eat it.
According to my mother, my addiction to ice-cream is a hereditary thing. She tells me that when she was young her grandfather would always wake her and my aunt up late at night when all the others went to sleep and they would sit and eat ice-cream out of a giant tub together. She said that being quiet was never a problem because they were all too busy stuffing their faces that the changes of speaking were slim to none.
When I was about four years old, my grandfather, who eats a scoop of ice-cream in a cone every night of the week for as long as I’ve been alive, began serving me a cone with ice-cream every night also.
I loved it. At this stage I was the only child in the house old enough to eat ice-cream so it was like my little treat. On hot summer days the whole family would sit outside on the deck with a bowl of cone of ice-cream and munch away. It was the perfect desert following a home cooked meal by my grandmother.
My favourite time was on school holidays and my grandparents would take us out to McDonalds for a lunch treat and then I would have a chocolate Sundae for lunch and my usual ice-cream scoop in a cone for dinner. I don’t think anything I ever did in the holidays could compare to the excitement I got out of eating ice-cream twice in one day.
My ice-cream addiction heightened in 2000 when my family went to Europe. The best ice-cream I ever had in my entire life came from two sweet shops in Croatia. Because it was a stinking hot summer, ice-cream was basically the only viable thing to eat all day. Even though we attempted to eat all the delicious food people made for us, all we wanted was the icre-cream.
Throughout the day all I wanted was ice-cream. The best thing was that it was dirt cheap. A bowl with three flavours, towered on top of one another was about $2 so including in my habit was so easy.
According to my father, he spent more money on ice-cream then he did on accommodation. Slightly exaggerated, but possibly not far off.
The best part was that this sweet shop was in the middle of the town in Croatia so we were able to enjoy ice-cream with all our friends. The sweet shop was a central and integral part of my trip as it was a meeting point and ended up being the last place we went to at the end of our trip. Everyone noticed how much my family loved the ice-cream that they all shouted us a last round if ice-creams on our last day. I was in heaven.
After coming back from Croatia, my mother, who is just about as addicted to ice-cream as me, and I decided we needed to find an ice-cream shop that was equal to the two in Croatia. In early 2001 we found it!
“Bar Italia” in Leichhardt became our new ice-cream heaven. We began having parties and functions here (lucky for them they also have great food) just so we could have their ice-cream for desert. Not suprisingly were weren’t the only ice-cream addicts because on any hot summers night the line for the ice-cream was out the door. When they introduced “take away in a tub” my mother and I were so excited that we bought enough ice-cream to last any normal person a month, (for my mother and I about ten days) and we got to enjoy our Bar Italia hit at home as well.
Then last year we discovered a small family business called Alpino. They have make beautiful shapes such as hearts and tear drops out of chocolate and then on the inside they put ice-cream. It looks beautiful and tastes exotic. My discovery of Alpino could not have come a better time.
I used their ice-cream for all the big events leading up to my wedding, including my engagement and kitchen tea. On the wedding night I even had the tear drops served for dessert. It was a very special touch of something that I love very much. Anyone who knows me well enough appreciated the gesture also.
I now have a little brother who is rivalling any ice-cream addiction that I have. He comes to my house for ice-cream, eats ice-cream at my mothers, then goes to my auntys and has ice-cream there and then last stop to my grandmothers for ice-cream in a cone with my grandfather. He could eat ice-cream day and night. It’s hilarious when my mother calls and says “Don’t give him ice-cream he already had two this morning”. By this stage it’s too late because he is so little and cute and to deny him anything is just impossible.”
Reading back on the entry I think what sort of mental case can write so much about ice-cream. My mother just walked into my house and read the entry. She laughed and said, it might be 8:30am but lets have some ice-cream. But as I walk into my living room, my little brother has beat us to it, he is sitting on the couch munchig away at a bowl of chocoloate swirl ice-cream. How cute.
