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July 20, 2017
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August 3, 2017
Food Chain Radio Show #1113
Michael Olson, Author & Urban Farming Agriculturalist
A Scream for Ice Cream
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Guest: Amy Ettinger, Author Sweet Spot: An Ice Cream Binge Across America
Ice cream is the quintessential food treat, and so most of us have a good story to tell about ice cream.
Michael Olson Food Chain Radio – what you saw was the USS Dale steaming hell-bent out into the channel, while the guys back aft were standing by their guns eating ice cream and watching World War II break out all around them.
Here is my favorite ice cream story, as told by Ernest Schnabel in Tales from a Tin Can by Michael Olson… The story takes place aboard the US Navy destroyer Dale, on the morning of 7 December, 1941, in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii…
As we left our berth and got underway, the deck force was still engaged in getting ready for combat. One young bosun named Fuller had the job of clearing the deck of all the wooden objects that collected in port. And there was a lot of it, because in port we had all these awnings rigged to keep the tropical sun off the decks. You also had to get rid of the all the wooden swabs, buckets and boxes because if a machine gun bullet from a Japanese plane were to strike any of it, slivers would fly all over the place just like shrapnel.
So Fuller was making his way aft, just tossing stuff like a madman when he came to the wooden ice cream gedunk. He grabbed it and was just starting to push it over the side when one of the guys said, “Hey, wait a minute!”
Back in 1941, ice cream was a mighty precious commodity in the destroyer Navy. Today you can find ice cream and sugar candy on almost any street corner. But back then, we tin can sailors had to get our ice cream off the bigger ships that had the equipment to make it. They almost always figured out ways to make us pay for it, too! So that young bosun struck a nerve when he made moves to toss all the ship’s ice cream over the side.
In a matter of seconds, the lock was broke and the ice cream distributed among the crew. Then Fuller kicked the empty wooden gedunk over the side. So, what you saw was the USS Dale steaming hell-bent out into the channel, while the guys back aft were standing by their guns eating ice cream and watching World War II break out all around them.
As Schnabel remarked, today you can find ice cream just about everywhere, and because it is has become ubiquitous, we have lost some of the love we once had for it.
But a new breed of ice creamery is emerging from the industrial wasteland to bring us new flavors, tastes and textures that just might rekindle the love we once had for that quintessential American food.
And so today we challenge with the most impossible of questions…
Leave a comment below: If you could only have one flavor for the rest of your life, which would it be?
Nationally syndicated Food Chain Radio airs live Saturday mornings 9-10AM Pacific.
