ice ice baby
growing up in austin didn’t afford a lot of opportunity for culinary excursions, but the one thing that was always a summertime trip was a visit to the dairy queen a couple times during the hot months. one thing you must know about my dad: he loves ice cream. like, dreamily so. he will poopoo pizza for its fatty content and then slurp down a big bowl of vanilla ice cream in the same evening. while his reasoning isn’t sound, at least the man knows where to spend his caloric intake.
so a trip to the DQ was not out of the question in the summer months when it was open. it didn’t happen very often, so when it did, it was a real treat. (don’t take this to mean that we were deprived of ice cream growing up. see above about one NL wallace. we ALWAYS had a gallon bucket of ice cream in the freezer. since we rarely splurged for anything beyond vanilla [and if we did it was usually gross neopolitan], we became deft at mixing our ice cream with a teaspoon of cocoa powder to create a sense of chocolate soft serve. liz was especially the expert at this, probably because she was the only one patient enough to wait to eat the ice cream.) the DQ in austin was on the west side near the old-school mcdonald’s, so it was always a trip to get over there.
the menu was always so appetizing, with the meal options and all the different ice cream options. but we never went there to eat a meal; it was always ice cream. and since there wasn’t much money, it was almost always a dipped cone (sugar cone – never waffle). ah, how i longed for a peanut buster parfait or a reese’s blizzard. BUT the dipped cone was better than homemade chocolate soft serve.
we always got ice cream on hottest of days and sat outside on the blistering red picnic tables, hauling our cones and handfuls of napkins out with us. ice cream started sliding out of the space between the chocolate shell and the cone as soon as we stepped outside, and either you had to be vigilant with eating the ice cream or watch the melty goodness run down your fingers. my favorite was when it was so hot, water beads started to form condensation on the shell and ice cream started breaking through in little white pinpoints.
of course it was a giant mess, trying to keep up with the meltiness of the ice cream in the heat. it wouldn’t be odd to see one of my siblings covered in ice cream and give the cone up to the trash (yeah, probably charlie cuz he was 1. young and 2. distracted). but it was always fun and it was always a treat.
these days i don’t get to DQ much, but i do frequent the ice cream shop in town a few times a summer (which has some delicious flavors and excellent waffle cones). i have an ice cream maker so i can make my own ice cream whenever i like, and any ice cream i buy is a flavor that i enjoy eating by itself, no cocoa power mixing necessary.