Celebrate National Ice Cream Day

Published 11:22 pm Friday, July 15, 2016

I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream.

Chocolate ice cream has been a food staple in my life for as long as I can remember. When I was a little girl, a bowl of chocolate ice cream was the nightly dessert for my brother and me.

When I was pregnant with my first child, my husband and I would make a nightly trek to the Baskin Robbins in Starkville, and I would order a triple scoop of, you guessed it, chocolate ice cream.

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I am pretty sure my love of the frozen food is hereditary. My paternal grandfather would always have to have a bowl of vanilla ice cream following a meal, and my dad can never say no to a bowl of the homemade mixtures.

For me, not much could ever take the place of the chocolate varieties, except Dad’s special Orange Crush recipe.

I still have fond memories from neighborhood gatherings of Saturday afternoons in Marion Park when Dad would cook hamburgers on the grill, and for dessert, he made the sherbet ice cream.

During the summer months this was a ritual with our neighbors, and us kids would sit around the electric ice cream maker and watch with anticipation as the rock salt slowly melted.

Talk about “sweet” times.

I have never had to have a special reason to dip out a scoop of ice cream, but it has just recently come to my attention Sunday is National Ice Cream Day.

Apparently, for the past 32 years, since President Ronald Reagan proclaimed July as National Ice Cream Month and established National Ice Cream Day as the third Sunday in the month of July, folks have been celebrating and enjoying this day with a bowl, cup or cone filled with their favorite flavor of ice cream.

Well, I can tell you this, I did not need a National Ice Cream Day to enjoy the sweet treat, since I have been indulging a lot longer than three decades.

However, after discovering Sunday is a day I should highlight on my calendar, I continued to peruse the website where I found out about National Ice Cream Day.

Did you know that Ben Franklin, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were like me and ate ice cream on a regular basis?

First Lady Dolly Madison served ice cream at the Inaugural Ball in 1813.

I am sure it was a cool party!

And according to this website, thousands of years ago, people in the Persian Empire put snow in a bowl, poured grape-juice concentrate over it and ate it as a treat.

When the weather was hot, they used the snow saved in the cool-keeping underground chambers known as “yakhchal,” or they used the snowfall that still remained at the top of mountains by the summer capital.

I am sure glad I do not have to hike up a mountain for a scoop.

Today, it is thought there are more than 1,000 flavors of ice cream.

So with this many options and the temperatures expected in the high nineties, I hope you all will enjoy National Ice Cream Day.

I plan to do so!

 

About Terri Cowart Frazier

Terri Frazier was born in Cleveland. Shortly afterward, the family moved to Vicksburg. She is a part-time reporter at The Vicksburg Post and is the editor of the Vicksburg Living Magazine, which has been awarded First Place by the Mississippi Press Association. She has also been the recipient of a First Place award in the MPA’s Better Newspaper Contest’s editorial division for the “Best Feature Story.”

Terri graduated from Warren Central High School and Mississippi State University where she received a bachelor’s degree in communications with an emphasis in public relations.

Prior to coming to work at The Post a little more than 10 years ago, she did some freelancing at the Jackson Free Press. But for most of her life, she enjoyed being a full-time stay at home mom.

Terri is a member of the Crawford Street United Methodist Church. She is a lifetime member of the Vicksburg Junior Auxiliary and is a past member of the Sampler Antique Club and Town and Country Garden Club. She is married to Dr. Walter Frazier.

“From staying informed with local governmental issues to hearing the stories of its people, a hometown newspaper is vital to a community. I have felt privileged to be part of a dedicated team at The Post throughout my tenure and hope that with theirs and with local support, I will be able to continue to grow and hone in on my skills as I help share the stories in Vicksburg. When asked what I like most about my job, my answer is always ‘the people.’

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