Toys (or Possibly Squirrels) in the Attic
Recently, we went to a screening of a new stop-motion-animated feature by a local filmmaker (The Lure of Ponies, by Beck Underwood). It was a delightful mystery, solved by a detecting doll among a veritable antique warehouse of old toys. At one point in the film, one toy is horrified by the prospect of being sent to the attic—a place where has-beens and wannabes go to die.
By coincidence, we are in the process of moving—which means we have had to spend a LOT of time in our attic. An early summer has made the attic feel like a furnace— a furnace in which our past was being consumed for the good of our future. While there, we have had to excavate vast middens of the detritus of our pasts—and confront our own has-beens and wannabes.
My wife was horrified to find poetry that she had written, half a century ago. This was her own private anguish; she did not share any of them with me. I found—and discarded—mountains of old paperwork (research for books that were published ages ago, heaps of drawings, sketches for projects long abandoned, record books for old invoices and expenses from an abandoned career as an illustrator) and—if those things were not sufficiently metaphorical—boxes of actual fossils I’ve collected. One box (thin slabs of black slate, plucked from a streambed in the Mohawk Valley, bearing the impressions of long-dead trilobites) followed my old notebooks into the dumpster.
It was enough just to see all those ancient things; I no longer felt a need to possess them. Nor did I feel the need for them to possess me.
“There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope. We give them a turn, and they make new and curious combinations. We keep on turning and making new combinations indefinitely; but they are the same old pieces of colored glass that have been in use through all the ages.”―Mark Twain
And, just to prove it, I’m going to dredge up (and slightly revise) something I wrote for Roll Magazine, several years ago—one that focused on revisiting more pleasant memories.
Creamsicles, Re-imagined
Summer has come on—early—and with a vengeance this year, and for some reason, the summers we remember are always more glorious than the one we’re experiencing. Perhaps it’s just that we were children back then, when everything was magical (or so it seems, now). Perhaps it’s just that simple pleasures were more than enough for us, before layers of experience jaded our palates.
Whatever the reason, for simple perfection, few ready-made frozen desserts match the lowly Creamsicle. We recall magical childhood memories of chasing after the ice cream man’s truck, a quick exchange of a few sticky coins, followed by their crisp and citrusy-tart exteriors, that gradually surrendered their creamy vanilla hearts.
Why would I be so crass as to attempt to replace that Proustian delight with some kind of substitute? Because, as Paul Simon sang about today’s Creamsicles (OK, he was referring to something else entirely) “you know they’d never match my sweet little imagination.” Sad to say, we can’t go home again.
How pretentious is that? Allusions to Proust, Paul Simon and Thomas Wolfe in one short paragraph about ice cream on a stick!
Anyway—whether they just don’t make Creamsicles the way they used to, or our tastes have evolved to the point where mundane reality can’t keep up with our remembered expectations—here are two approaches to recreating the remembered experience, if not the actuality of the thing itself.
These are almost as easy as ripping the paper off a Creamsicle.
Tropical Creamsicle Sundae
Serves 1–4 (depending on ambient temperature and degree of self-control)
Ingredients
1 pint Coconut sorbet, slightly softened
1 pint Mango ice cream, slightly softened
Method
1. Divide Coconut ice cream between four bowls, packing ice cream into an even layer. Place bowls in freezer to firm the ice cream.
2. Divide Mango ice cream between the four prepared bowls, packing mango ice cream in an even layer on top of the coconut ice cream. Place bowls in freezer to firm the ice cream. Garnish with a slice of orange and a mint leaf if you want to show off, or simply dig in.
Creamsicle Float
Serves 1–4 (same as above)
Ingredients
1 pint premium vanilla ice cream
1 bottle Sparkling Blood Orange soda*
canned real whipped cream
Method
1. Place one four-ounce scoop of ice cream in each of four tall glasses.
2. Carefully pour soda to within an inch of the top. This is going to produce a lot of foam, so have a spoon handy to remove excess. Do NOT discard—this is your cook’s reward for making dessert for everyone else.
3. Top with whipped cream. You could use home-made whipped cream, but unless you pipe it on with a star-tipped pastry bag, you won’t get that soda-fountain look— and, besides, this is supposed to be EASY. We’re aiming for instant transport to the joy of our childhoods, not a fussy display of our kitchen skills.
* I use Taste of Inspirations brand, available in Hannaford and Food Lion grocery stores. You could use other orange sodas, but they wouldn’t produce the delicate rosy coloration and subtle tang that blood oranges contribute.
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