One of my current homebound virus responsibilities is keeping up with our food supply and replenishing when necessary.
I thought that my shopping list was full, then realized before shutting the freezer door that we were just about out of ice cream.
Earlier, I had been considering a few different topics for my next historical perspective, but now, I found one that I could really sink my teeth into, popular (Jewish) ice creams.
The Italians may have been the original inventors of ice cream, but Jews have been more successful in developing the more popular flavors and brands.
You give your age away if the only ice cream flavors available to you were chocolate, vanilla and strawberry.
It took Jewish pioneers like Irving Robbins, investing his $6,000 bar mitzvah gelt savings in 1948 and partnering with his brother-in-law, Burt Baskin, to imagine at least 21 different (minimum) high quality flavors that made the Baskin-Robbins (B-R) name famous.
Dunkin’ Donuts, founded by Jewish businessman William Rosenberg, merged with the ice cream partnership in 1994.
Polish immigrants Reuben and Rose Mattus, learned ice- and ice cream-making from the Italians, but they believed that they could improve their product with natural ingredients.
Honoring the Danish for helping to save many of their Jewish neighbors from the Nazi Holocaust, they gave their product a Danish sounding name, Haagen-Dazs (H-D)
H-D not only has more than 65 flavors, but also they are all certified kosher.
David Mintz, an observant Jew of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, being both lactose intolerant and an ice cream lover, realized that a dairy-free desert would be an attraction for observant Jews who loved their ice cream.
Nine years of experimentation paid off after Mintz successfully developed Tofutti, a delicious tofu-based nondairy ice cream, and other nondairy products as well.
In the 1970s, Steve Herrell and his Jewish wife may not have been famous, but they deserve credit for inspiring Ben and Jerry to incorporate his “mix-in” technique by preblending, producing many flavors.
Starting as an organic farming school, Stonyfield (New Hampshire), Samuel Kaymen and Gary Hirshberg were trying in the 1980s to grow the organic farm movement by teaching former city dwellers how to farm organically.
They sold yogurt from their cow’s milk as a byproduct.
Instead, they found that the production of organic yogurt was a better choice for protecting the environment than farming the land organically.
Today, Stoneyfield organic products such as frozen yogurts, milk and cream, can be found across the country.
Ice cream, in my opinion, is not unhealthy as some might think. It is how much and when it is eaten that can make a difference.
Sadly, Bert Baskin was only 54 years old in 1967 when he died from a heart attack. He weighed 240 pounds. Irv Robbins was 90 when he died in 2008.
Ice cream itself is healthy if you eat it in a healthy manner, early in the day and in a small amount.
Admittedly, I usually have eaten my ice cream in the evening while watching television, but tomorrow, instead, I’m going to try a scoop in my cereal for breakfast.
Why not?