Friday, October 12, 2012

Wooden Ice Cream Parlor





Chapter 7 is the one on ice creams.

I wish I'd kept some visual record of our earlier, other-media expressions of this ice cream theme! One example: before Jenna and Kate were born, Emily converted her push-car-toy into an ice cream cart. From its handlebars, she hung a small basket containing brown paper cones and plastic easter eggs for scoops of ice cream. She also had a small music box that played three songs, which she attached to this ice cream cart. She'd push it around the house, merry tunes announcing her arrival to potential customers, and sell her ice cream cones. And that is all I can remember. I know there were later ice cream adventures, especially when the other two girls were born and old enough to play along, but my brain has blanked out. Sad.

So, to make up for the total lack of photos documenting our journey through icecreamdom, here is an entire post dedicated to our most recent permutation - in wood.

Behold our old-fashioned ice cream parlor, where a person could get single scoops

 and double scoops

and triple scoops and sprinkles and caramel and cherries.

And be a bit greedy and get all the flavors all at once.

I love all those round scoops of ice cream. The girls painted them - they begged and begged to be allowed to help contribute to the Big Wooden Toy Food Project, so I let them, on the condition that they let me do the sprinkles and other fussy details. They all had strong opinions on what flavors should make the final cut (oddly, Mother's delightful suggestion of sardine-and-squid was violently vetoed, bah). In the end, we agreed on vanilla with sprinkles and caramel, mint chocolate chunk, lemon sorbet, strawberry and chocolate. Yum.  

And oh -those dotty, spotty holders on stripey poles! Like life preservers with reverse measles on candy straws, straight from the North Pole. Is there any color combination more nostalgically old-fashioned than red-and-white?

We made sets for us and for you.

And packed them up nicely, ready to go.

Find them in the shop soon! Hopefully by the weekend! 

8 comments:

  1. You really are a genius. (And you must have amazing time-management skills! How DO you fit it all in?) :)

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  2. Your squid flavor is not too far off for the Mexican town of Dolores Hidalgo. There, the town square is surrounded by the wooden carts of vendors who compete for the most exotic ice cream flavors that they are only too happy to let you try. There is cheese, beer, mole, avocado, octopus, and the prize winning, shrimp cocktail flavor. We found we had to resort to generous scoops of mango and strawberry to drown out the assault to the taste buds.

    Clare

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    1. Clare - we have sweetcorn, yam (taro) and red bean in Singapore. They are quite lovely, actually. Octopus and shrimp cocktail, though, I think I'll pass on. I'm not that brave.

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  3. even more yummy goodness??! Wow, I was already impressed with the previous post!

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  4. Ohh, fun, fun. Now all you need is an array of little wooden candies. =)

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  5. Now this is what wooden food should look like!

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  6. I love your blog already, (and though I have always liked cardboard, you have inspired me to think of it in new ways) but wooden ice cream? Spectacular!

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