Maple Ice Cream

This week a review in my local newspaper compared various brands of maple-flavored ice cream. The reviewer, Elizabeth Román, sampled Friendly's, Hood, and Bart's ice creams. When she mentioned maple walnut, my mind filled with childhood memories.

Maple walnut was my father's favorite. He loved ice cream, especially maple walnut.

Maple walnut was NOT my favorite. My first encounter with it, as a very young girl, was upsetting.  After one bite, I rejected it, complaining to my parents that the ice cream "had BONES in it!"

That became a favorite family story, retold many times. I definitely preferred plain vanilla or other ice creams without surprises inside.

I agree with Elizabeth Román. As she praised Bart's ice cream, she wrote, "Can I just say it's refreshing to eat maple ice cream without walnuts in it. I have never been a big walnut fan and this ice cream does fine without them."  Yes!  Gradually I did accept other nuts in ice cream, but not walnuts. I didn't much like the slightly-bitter taste of walnuts.

She concludes her review with a suggestion that makes me smile, and think of Daddy again.

It occurred to me that you could also buy some really good quality vanilla ice cream and pour local maple syrup on it. That would probably be amazing, too.

Yes! Yes!  Daddy loved to do that!  And we had local maple syrup, made by Mommy as she boiled down the sap we collected from nearby maple trees.  See my earlier article (March 2008) about how we made maple syrup in Danvers.