Ice Cream

Listeners share their childhood memories of ice cream.

Want to share your story? Email us at treatlandpod@gmail.com.

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Unknown Speaker  0:00  
Hello and welcome to treatland. This is the podcast where you the listener share your favorite food memories from childhood. We'll be playing your audio clips and reading your stories, and we'll definitely be sharing some of our own along the way. Each episode will have its own food-related theme. If you like what you hear today, please be sure to subscribe to our show.

Unknown Speaker  0:24  
My favorite ice cream might have to be thrifty is rocky road. When I think about my childhood, that's what stands out. So clearly in my mind. I used to spend summers with my grandparents and when we go grocery shopping, we would stop for a cone on the way out. I loved not only the flavor of Rocky Road, its smooth chocolate ice cream, but also the various textures that came with it that keep your palate intrigued. You got the soft chewiness of the sweet marshmallows with the contrast of the nutty crunchy almonds to create almost a duel in your mouth. Dorothy's ice cream was also unique and that was presented with a cylindrical scoop. I guess I always gravitate to what's unique

Unknown Speaker  1:07  
so my fondest memory of ice cream would have to definitely be Haagen Dazs ice cream. No, that might sound surprising to most but being from a small town in Louisiana, bluebells seems to be the main culprit of ice cream proprietorship of this area. It really stems back from one of my favorite movies growing up, I was probably eight or nine. When I remember my mom taking me to go see adventures and babysitting. Which of course at the time I had the biggest crush on Elizabeth Shue going back to karate kid. And I remember this one particular scene where the parents are getting ready to go out the babysitter's there and the little sister is asking if they can go get Haagen DAAS. You know, that was her big deal. Can we get hog indoors? And of course, my young mind wonders, what is this hog indoors that she speaks of? So of course asking my mom, what is this hog indoors? So you know, she just politely kind of fluffs it off. Oh, that's, that's some high end expensive ice cream. Wasn't that readily available here in the south. And so I remember, anytime we would go to the grocery store, anytime it was, it was a moment to have a chance to pick up ice cream. It was oh, let's get Haagen DAAS, let's get this hog indoors. And it was always like, no, no, we'll get this other stuff, we'll get the cheaper stuff, so on and so forth. And I remember just always pressing her about it, just why it appealed to me so much because of this movie. But I just wanted to try it. So of course, finally giving in she, you know, bought at one time. And of course, it was just the luxury of a lifetime. Oh, we got hog indoors. And I mean, I could not be more static and more happy that I got the same thing as the cool kids and adventures in babysitting God. So of course, it kind of became a thing where it was just kind of a wink wink. You know, if I did something good. I was the baby of the family. So if my older brother or sister had plans and it was just kind of me and my mom hanging out, you know, she would kind of splurge and say, Hey, how about we go get some Haagen Dazs ice cream. So that just always kind of stuck with me growing up? Well into my teen and adult years, even now, going back, you know, when I do grocery shopping, I'll grab a pint of Haagen Dazs ice cream and really look back on it fondly. I lost my mom when I was probably about 20 years old. And it's something just one of those small, weird little things that just kind of brings a smile on my face because I know what it meant to me growing up and what it kind of meant, like our little thing that we had, like, hey, you know, how about some hog indoors? Let's get some hog indoors. And so I will always look back on that at 43 years of age of just fond memories of something as simple as Haagen Dazs ice cream.

Unknown Speaker  4:38  
It's probably pretty obvious that our very first episode is about ice cream. And that first story comes from Serena who lives in the Bay area of California. And the second story is from Tim who is in Shreveport, Louisiana. Hi, I'm Rebecca. And if you're listening to this, you might have been brought here from my retro inspired Instagram page. retro Plex. I wanted to start a podcast in correlation with that page, because I had started noticing a lot of people would comment or message me and tell me stories about some of the memories that they had that were sparked from images that I was posting. And that was kind of the whole point behind the page was to be posting images that brought back nostalgia for me. So some of my favorite stories to read almost always are tied back to food. And my favorite memories from my own childhood are always tied back to food. So that page has been really fun. And I wanted to take that and have a way to broadcast these stories out there to the world, because right now I'm the only one reading them. So that is the concept behind treat land. And this has been great. I am so happy that I got a bunch of cool stories for the first episode. I hope you all enjoy them as much as I do.

Unknown Speaker  6:03  
When I was in high school, my friend and I would after school, we'd go walk over to the grocery store. And we would buy Ben and Jerry's ice cream because they used to have a sale for like two for $5. And so each of us would get our own pint or half pint, whatever size it is of ice cream. And we would go back home and we would put on our swimsuits. And we would eat the ice cream on my roof wearing our bikinis. This was in Southern California. So we could do it pretty much year round. And I think I even have a photo of us sitting up on the roof, eating our ice cream. But yeah, that's one of my fondest memories that involves ice cream. When I was 16, it was the summer between my junior and senior year of high school, I had this amazing opportunity to go to Italy and stay in this amazing villa with some family of mine that were from France. And I just remember, I mean, that was the first time I had ever had gelato. And I would literally get ice cream every single day when I was there, sometimes multiple times a day. Back then, Magnum ice cream wasn't in the US yet. So I remember getting Magnum ice cream bars from like this local little bodega. And it was like the most amazing thing ever. I mean, now they have Magnum ice cream, you know, you can buy it in the grocery store now. So it's not as special as it used to be. But back then it was really exciting, and amazing and delicious. I mean, it's still delicious. It's just a lot more accessible now. But also, there was one day, I can't remember the name of the town that we were in, but it was somewhere in southern Italy near the near the ocean. And it was really hot. And I ordered gelato in a cone was chocolate. And it was just melting faster than I could eat it and it was dripping down my hands. And my French uncle looked at me and laughs and just says oh kitty. And that is also one of my favorite ice cream memories.

Unknown Speaker  8:47  
That last story was sent in from my good friend Katie who lives in Salt Lake City.

Unknown Speaker  8:52  
Hello, I'm going to share three memories of ice cream from my childhood. The first one is about the month of December, which might in the northern hemisphere not be a month people associate with ice cream. But for me, it certainly was the first memory that came to mind. So my birthday is just a little bit before Christmas. And every year my mom would make a huge deal about Christmas. The baking would begin sometime in November, and my mom would decorate and be so busy all month that I think when my birthday came around, she was so tired of baking that she didn't want to bake me a birthday cake. So normally she would head out to Dairy Queen and buy me a birthday cake from there. So sometimes it was a ice cream, the Yule Log the festive log ice cream cake. And other times it was a regular sort of round ice cream cake, but it always had a Christmas theme to it. And I don't know if that's all the had available at the time, or if it was something my mom thought I would like, because I've always had a significant love for penguins and snowman. And that's, you know, they had something along those themes, but I always thought I was so lucky to get an ice cream cake for my birthday. It was only as an adult, I realized that my mum was really buying me an ice cream cake because she was too busy and tired to bake me a cake. And my brother, on the other hand, whose birthday is in April, always got a regular birthday cake on an ice cream cake. So when my mum would bring in this Dairy Queen cake, it started to become such a tradition that I think my brother was a little bit jealous. But also, I think it just became part of the Christmas tradition in itself. And I really never mind that my birthday was sort of the beginning of the Christmas season in our family. And, you know, in more recent years, my brother has taken over that tradition of continuing to buy me a Dairy Queen ice cream cake for my birthday every year. So it's something that has stayed with me from childhood into adulthood. Another memory about ice cream from my very young childhood, though, that really stands out is about going to my grandparents house, my dad's parents. They were almost like a second set of parents to me and I spent an awful lot of time at their house as a child and as as an adult as well. But when we were in the early 80s, they would always buy these ice cream cups from Lucerne dairy. It was sold through Safeway brand of stores. And they were kind of like a little plastic cup with a wooden spoon and ice cream inside. Sometimes it was just vanilla ice cream. And sometimes it was like an ice cream sundae with either chocolate or strawberry. And for some reason, we always call them by the wrong name. We call them Dixie Cups, even though now I realized that's a brand of paper cups. Not an ice cream cup. But anyways, my brother and I would often kind of fight over the flavors, my brother's a chocolate addict. And he didn't want me to have the chocolate ones. So he always wanted me to have vanilla or strawberry sundaes. But my grandparents never allowed him to dictate that. So I used to get to pick my Sunday, despite my brother trying to assign me the less favorable flavors. And I always associated those with my grandparents house. As soon as I get there, I'd search trying to get into that deep freeze so I could have look and see what was in there for ice cream. And every once in a while it wouldn't be those Sunday cups, it would be like sometimes it would be popsicles, which I considered to be a much inferior treat. And other times it would be creamsicles, which was like the popsicle covered ice cream on a stick. And I did like those but the Sunday cups were definitely the favorite. The last memory I'm going to share is about a restaurant called Bonanza, I think it was a Canadian chain. That was similar to sizzler in the United States. And they had like a big salad bar that also included a sundae bar. And I remember thinking I would get through as much of my meal as I had to until my parents would let me get to that sundae bar, because they had one of those soft serve machines and I was making soft serve ice cream sundaes that were so big that they were overflowing from the bowl. And I remember sometimes just honestly making myself almost sick with these huge Sundays that I was making. And little did I know then it was almost like training for later on in life because as a teenager, I worked at McDonald's. And I remember my ice cream cone making skills with the soft serve machine at McDonald's were unparalleled. I could make ice cream cones that were like a foot tall, because I had built the skills to create I think a solid foundation at the base of the cone and create these really really tall ice cream cones that were so impressive even though the management of McDonald's hated those ice cream cones because obviously I was using up a lot more of the product than they probably wanted. But those ice cream sundae bar experiences for my brother and I were so fun because it was like with the unlimited ice cream you could make hit that sundae bar. It really was unleashing my brother and I into like a ice cream Candy Land where we could you know, no holds barred. Anyways, those are the three memories I wanted to share. Hope this helps.

Unknown Speaker  14:51  
Thank you, Janet. Those are some fantastic stories and honestly, I don't think you're alone in calling those Sunday cubs Dixie cups I actually firmly remember doing the same thing and Thank you to Rebecca as well for graciously allowing me to co host this podcast with her. This is all her idea, her baby. And she's done an amazing job so far, I'm really excited about it. And I'm very grateful to be a part of it. My name is Steven and I was born in the early 80s. My favorite foods as a child that were candy. As you might imagine, a young boy of my age at the time, would have felt my favorites were Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and snickers bars. I still don't know what they did to these wonderful candies to make them taste the way that they do today. But back when I was a child, they were basically just heaven encased in chocolate. Anyway, I know my voice is terrible. I apologize for that. But there's not really all that much I can do about that. So I hope you'll bear with me. I also work on two other food related media projects, one of which is basically reviews where I do review videos of toys, candies, and all other sorts of fun things. And the other is pizza Playhouse where I review frozen pizzas. So if any of that stuff sounds interesting, and you can actually stand the sound of my voice, feel free to check them out.

Unknown Speaker  16:10  
When I was eight years old, my favorite thing in the world was to go to great America, which was an amusement park in San Jose, California, near where I grew up. I absolutely loved roller coasters, and all of the rides that they had, and just the feeling of going there with my mom and my two brothers. And exploring and running around. It felt like Disneyland it felt like the most exciting place in the world. I always loved amusement parks and places like that. I've always loved thrill rides. And I've also always loved food and always considered food to be one of the most important components of anything I did or any event. So whenever we would go to great America, I would of course, look forward to the rides, and all of that. But I also really look forward to the food. I loved those giant pretzels that they had that were always warm and had salts. And I would love to get them and eat it while I walked around the park to find the next ride I wanted to go on. I loved all the candy shops. I love the smells of the funnel cake and all the different goodies that I never got to have at home there were special. There were special goodies that you got to have when you went to these places. One time I was at grade America with a friend. And we'd gotten in rat and in line for a ride. And sometimes these lines can be over an hour wait. And it was a big roller coaster. It was a new roller coaster called the Vortex where you stood up, you're standing up in, you know the cart, the roller coaster cart when you were on the ride. So we gotten the line and I said listen, this is gonna be an hour and a half. I'm gonna go to the frozen yogurt, the soft serve, it was soft serve ice cream, I'm gonna go to the soft serve ice cream stand and get an ice cream and come back because I was always thinking about food and always wanted to be eating. So I figured I don't want to wait doing nothing for an hour and a half. I want to be eating a delicious, soft serve giant ice cream cone. My friend was like okay, whatever. I hope you can get back in line. But I was determined. I was like, Oh, I will and I'll get my ice cream too. So I ran halfway around the park. It was literally on the opposite side of the park of where we were at. But I was just racing just knew that I needed to get that ice cream cone. And I got it and it was this place that they put would put like a swirl of flavor. It had all these different flavors like cotton candy and strawberry and blackberry and it would give you a swirl of that flavor within the ice cream. And so they handed it to me and it was so beautiful, that beautiful, perfect, soft serve look. And I was so excited. And I started eating it. But then I realized, if I waited too long, my friend was going to be pretty far down the line. It'd be hard to get to her. So I started running. And I was running and taking a few look some ice cream when I could. And then at one point, I kind of like sprinted a little bit and I tripped a little and my ice cream completely just fell off the cone and splattered all over the ground. And I'll never forget I remember somebody walked by and they said, Oh, I wish I had a camera to take a picture of that. And I just looked at him like really? My sadness, my despair, this terrible thing. He wanted to capture this. I was so sad and I thought about going back to get another one but I knew I had to go back to my friend. So I just ate the rest of the cone and went and was able to get back in line with her and go on the ride.

Unknown Speaker  19:54  
Thank you so much, Whitney for sharing your story. Whitney actually hosts her own podcast which is on Spotify and iTunes and I've listened to almost every episode because she has so many amazing guests so many amazing topics covered. That is the women waken podcast.

Unknown Speaker  20:11  
The first memory that comes to mind when thinking about ice cream when I was a child is the ice cream truck. Mr. Softee, Mr. Softee was an ice cream truck that came around maybe every week, every couple of weeks. And the character on the truck was a man with like a bowtie and the cone of the ice cream cone was his face. And his hair was the swirl of the ice cream. So that was interesting in itself. And then I remember every time I went to the ice cream truck, which I didn't get very often, maybe like once every couple of months. I mean, I always yelled for it like kids do. But it was a treat if I was going to get the ice cream from the truck, but on the truck, I always remember seeing the ice cream popsicles with the characters with the bubble gum eyes. And I always wanted one. And my parents always told me I couldn't have one because I was not into fruit flavored ice cream or candy as a child. I'm still really not. But I really wanted one. I thought they were the coolest things. And then one day, one day I got that ice cream. My parents finally told me I could have it. I got a Ninja Turtle. And I opened the Ninja Turtle ice cream all excited. And the gumball eyes were read and melted. And it looked like it was bleeding from its eyes and was terrifying. And I ate it. And I didn't like it because it was fruit flavored. And the gumball eyes were scary. And that is one of the greatest memories from a kid from being a kid that I have because I had so much anticipation and it was Friday. But besides from that, I usually got something chocolate or vanilla. But yeah, those popsicles are a huge part of my childhood. And I was looking into it. It looks like they're made by blue Barney. And yeah, they're phenomenal.

Unknown Speaker  22:39  
That last story comes from Jen who has her own YouTube station, that is Jenny penny, and then her own Instagram page. Jenny Penny Insta. Thank you again, Jen for your story.

Unknown Speaker  22:52  
My fondest childhood ice cream related memory has to do with the WWF ice cream bars. My first exposure to these things was in the WWF magazine. I think it was June of 1989. When I came across the advertisement, I believe the image was the Weasley manager the mouth of the South Jimmy Hart taking a bite out of a ice cream bar with Hulk Hogan's image on it. And immediately I was like, oh my god, Hulk Hogan, on an ice cream bar. He was my hero. So I was pretty psyched about that. So four months after that every single time my mother took me to the grocery store, I would always run off to the freezer case to see if I could find these things. And I never could. Because what they don't tell you is they were not sold in stores, or at least if they were sold in stores. They were not sold in stores near where I lived. So I kind of forgot about them after a while just sort of chalking it up to something that I was never going to actually be able to experience. Now fast forward a few months to the dog days of summer. I'm probably sitting bored in my room or outside sweating in the sweltering humid western New York summer. And I hear the jingle of the ice cream truck which was rare for me because I didn't live in a neighborhood that had a lot of children. It was actually mostly elderly people, so there wasn't really much need for the ice cream truck. But on this day I heard it and it was music to my ears literally. So I run out there excitedly. Lo and behold on the side of the truck is the image of the WWF ice cream bar. To say it was excited would be an understatement. I purchased probably two or three of them. I think there were $1.25 or $1.50 at the time. They came in these cool little floppy red cardboard boxes adorned with cartoon images of the wrestlers, and advertising an exclusive trading card included in the box, but I didn't care about that. What I really cared about was the ice cream itself. When I finally opened the box and laid my eyes on this it was just as beautiful as I'd ever imagined. A tan ocular cookie with an image of the wrestler etched in brown on the on the front and their name below it in black lettering. Below that was a thick sheet of vanilla ice cream with a hard chocolate shell on the back. And oh my goodness, it is still the best ice cream I've ever had in my entire life. I've never had a cookie like that before. To me it was a perfect ratio of ice cream to cookie. And that extra hard chocolate shell on the back added some intangible that just couldn't be described and the texture was absolutely perfect. After that, every time I heard the familiar jingle of the ice cream truck, I would run outside with the sole objective of obtaining more of these ice cream bars. Now, like most things, they eventually stopped manufacturing them and I could not find this wonderful ice cream bar anywhere for several years. Luckily, in my teens, probably about five years later, they actually released the exact same ice cream by with X Men characters on it, which was great for me because I was a huge comic book fan at the time. So I got a little bit of a reprieve. As of today. I haven't had one of those wonderful bars since probably 2003. And the last one that I had was poetically, Hulk Hogan. In his 2002 return a tire with a feather boas and the the Hollywood look. A few years ago, the WWE actually touted that they were going to be re releasing them. But what they released was a shell of this former glorious ice cream bar, it was just an Ice Cream Sandwich where the image on the front was very similar to the ice cream bar of all the but the flavor was not there. And it was just extremely disappointing. Very sad.

Unknown Speaker  26:28  
A food memory that just really sticks in my mind is an ice cream social that took place in my kindergarten year of school. And I just absolutely hated school more than anything. I dreaded Sunday nights. I knew before I even started kindergarten that I was going to hate it somehow. My mom had to drive me until I was in third or fourth grade because I was terrified of the bus. I remember there was an advertisement for an ice cream social and it was maybe the first or second week of school. And I had a younger brother. And this ice cream social. It said you can bring your parents and your family to it. And it was at night and I just saw a scream and I thought okay, this this could be good. One good thing at school. So we go I think it was a Thursday or Friday night. We get there. And I mean, I already kind of had a horrible pit in my stomach is bringing my family that I love so much to this place that I hated so much. But we go into the cafeteria. It's super loud, super noisy, like fluorescent lights. And there were rows and rows of different ice cream flavors and toppings. They give me the little Styrofoam cup and they fill it up with vanilla soft serve. I just wanted as much in there as possible. And I go over and there's these big mats that are warm and there was hot butterscotch and hot fudge. So I just poured on this hot butterscotch sauce on the vanilla soft serve and it kind of just dripped off the top went around and made a little vanilla ice cream mountain. And so then I took a spoon and was just pouring on these m&ms and pouring on rainbow sprinkles. And I went and found a spot and I was mixing the m&ms in with the butterscotch and vanilla cold vanilla ice cream. And it was super colorful. And it tasted absolutely amazing. Something about the butterscotch and the chocolate and the like candy coated chocolate which is so good. I remember thinking that I needed to just really savor that moment. I could tell the rest of the year was going to be the same as it had started miserable and terrifying. But the ice cream social was a positive memory. Thanks again to everyone that submitted their stories. If you would like to share your story with us, please email us at treat land pod@gmail.com

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