‘My Lost Youth’ is an 1855 poem by the American writer Henry Wadsworth Longfellow about his longing for his childhood village; he does not mention ice cream, I assume at that time electricity was not available so they did not have refrigerators and therefore no ice cream!
A hundred years later when I was a young child, we did have a refrigerator and one of my fond memories from early childhood was on hot summer days my mother would treat us with homemade vanilla ice cream, which had a wonderful flavor, I remember it as delicious, exquisite, magical.
A decade later in the 1960’s industry production of ice cream became commonplace; we would buy it. At that time in my family, we often made a Sunday afternoon trip to one of the nearby yacht harbors.
My father’s nostalgia was to see the yachts and remember how in his youth sailed with his brothers. His siblings remembered this and for his 50th birthday their gift was a nautical clock and a barometer, which I have inherited. The nautical clock strikes a bell every 3 hours, so we do not rewind it as it disturbed our sleeping and we do not have to start a new shift. I believe this was a very nostalgic gift for my father.
My nostalgic memory is that when our Sunday afternoon tours ended in the summer, we had with an ice cream. My ice cream was always vanilla covered with dark chocolate but it was not as delicious as I remember my mother made it. We would sit at the harbor listening to the sounds of the boats, the slapping of the ropes on the masts, the smell of sea and fish, sometimes windy, sometimes less so. A memory of having a good family time.
In the 1990’s when my children were young, we could get ‘classical magnum’ which was quite similar to the ice cream of the 1960’s, vanilla ice cream covered with chocolate that reminded me of my youth. Today when we have an ice cream or soft ice, I always take clean and simple vanilla, if I can get it to remember my past.
My Dear tells me I am old fashioned, old school, afraid to try something new, that I do not progress to new flavors and tastes.
< Photo from the ice cream refrigerator in the shop: not simple vanilla, not to my taste.
I see nothing wrong in having a fond family memory, when I have a vanilla ice cream. The problem is that today to get a ‘classical magnum’ is impossible. However, on a recent tour to Australia, to the Northern Territory, Kakadu National Park at the visitor’s center I found my ‘classical magnum’ of yesteryears. It was wonderful. But I cannot go there every time I want an ice cream.
I do not understand, why ‘classic magnum’ is not available, instead we are exposed to a lot of what some people call sophisticated and advanced tastes. According to 2014 article on National Geographic 29% of ice creamers prefer vanilla ice cream followed by chocolate (8.9 percent), butter pecan (5.3 percent), and strawberry (5.3 percent); I am not alone in preferring vanilla.
In the past few years, I may take a ‘magnum berries’ in the purple cover; but then this year they changed the taste of the purple cover to ‘magnum chill’ which was horrible, I have no other world for it, nauseated me and I even vomited. I had bought three without looking at the script, I took one bite, vomited and threw out the rest; My dear ate one, but there is still one in the refrigerator, for more than a month, nobody wants it; at the end of the summer, I will throw it away.
disgusting, made me vomit
I may also try ‘magnum almond’, but the almonds get stuck between the teeth and I have to floss, not great.
Researching this note I came upon several interesting things:
The psychologists call my response to vanilla ice cream: a Proust effect, that is to have an emotional memory from activating of the senses, like smell, taste or smell. Named after the French writer Marcel Proust who described, how the experience of eating a madeleine (a small, shell-shaped sponge cake) transported him in memory back to childhood, in his novel A la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time; published 1913-27; I have not read it, but now I have a reason to read it, though not in French!).
This response could also be called nostalgia; nostalgia is a Greek word meaning ‘aching for the home’. The most known nostalgic person is probably Odysseus, trying to find his way back home to his beloved wife, Penelope, on Ithaca; it took him ten years and countless adventures before achieving that. However, the concept of nostalgia was not from ancient times, but from the 17th century describing Swiss soldiers longing for their homes and families. My father’s nostalgia was sailing with his brothers in his youth.
I did not know that vanilla is characterized as a spice; furthermore, it is the second most expensive spice after saffron due to need for hand-pollination makes it very labor intensive to grow. It is original from Mexico but is cultured in other tropical areas today. You obtain the vanilla from the fruit or bean of a tropical climbing orchids, almost like wine plants. The plants are very sensitive to the surroundings which as in wine is called terroir; they need the right temperature and water conditions; susceptible to fungal infections. So global warming is bad also for vanilla orchids. That means that about 99% of vanilla flavor is synthetic and not the original or natural thing. This made me wonder if my mother used original vanilla for her home-made ice cream and when industry mass production took over the market, they use only the synthetic flavor and that is perhaps less tasty.
But that does not explain why the industry has stopped producing the ‘classic magnum’.
I have lost my youth, which of course is inevitable as time passes,
I have lost my childhood vanilla ice cream in the haziness of history and stupid industry decisions.
I should try to find a recipe for homemade vanilla ice cream and use real vanilla not some synthetic stuff to try an remake my mother's ice cream!
Can be bought in Kakadu National Park, Northern Territory, Australia; not where you go for a quiet Sunday afternoon walk.
Rambling about unattainable vanilla ice cream and family nostalgia.
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