Tuesday, July 4, 2017

What's Your Favorite Flavor of Ice Cream?


“Ben & Jerry’s is an indulgent dessert and should be eaten in moderation. 
You should not be replacing more than one meal a day with ice cream. 
We do not consider a pint or tub of ice cream to be a single serving.” –Jerry Greenfield

Did you know that July is called the Ice Cream Month? And with good reason as this 2,000-year-old treat can always cool and soothe the hot summer blues, body, and creative soul. Marco Polo returned to Italy from his Far East expeditions with a recipe for sherbert. Seems Catherine de Medici of Italy later enjoyed her “cream ice” in 1553. And it didn’t take long before everyone could buy a scoop in 1660!

Did you also know that your favorite ice cream flavor speaks volumes about your personality?

To verify this, there’s research conducted by neurologist Dr. Alan Hirsch, founder of the Smell and Taste Treatment and Research Foundation. "Seems Hirsch uses various standardized psychiatric test results to make statistical correlations, explaining that the same part of the brain (the limbic lobe) is responsible for both personality traits and food preference."

"Hirsch says the taste for your favorite ice cream is set during childhood and tends to remain constant throughout your life."

As an author, this intrigues me that while writing, to consider myself and story characters –not to mention family and friends- in this new, sensory light. Hmmm…I wonder what ice cream my 3x Great Uncle Liberty Raymond killed at the Battle of Ft. Wagner in the Civil War enjoyed as a child on his New Hampshire apple orchard.

Or other sheroes like Ann Hasseltine Judson, Julia Tarrant Barron, Amelia Earhart, Eleanor Roosevelt, Helen Keller, Golda Meir, and Mother Teresa. Or writers like Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Rumi, Isaak Dinesen, Hafiz, or Peace Pilgrim. 

Sugar bears! I don't know all my family's favorite ice cream flavors. Do you?!

What personality traits does this choice of a childhood ice cream flavor reveal and how might this enhance your writing? This is just fun to ponder --besides the more serious personality perspective tools ie. the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, Enneagram, or DiSC Profile.

As I now write while juggling a somewhat melting cone…

Descriptive adjectives flow.
Plot twists sweeten.
Vocabulary gets sprinkled with multi-syllabic words.
Creative insights gather.
Memories of happy moments drip...drip...drip.


For fun, here are my assigned ice cream flavors from Hirsch’s research to seven well-known people with birthdays in July:

* The Dalai Lama, July 6 - Vanilla
* Sylvester Stallone, July 6 – Rocky Roads
* Tom Hanks, July 9 – Chocolate
* Malala Yousafzai, July 12- Vanilla
* Ernest Hemingway, July 21 – Coffee
* Robin Williams, July 21 –Butter Pecan
* J.K. Rowlings, July 31 – Chocolate Chip

So what’s your favorite ice cream for cooling down this July?

What do you think about the matches above?

P.S. Your invitation to join 22 writing sisters and me awaits you at the St. Pete Writing Retreat: Recharge Your Body & Creative Soul, October 29-November 4.


P.P.S. The retreat’s B & B, the Watergarden Inn on the Bay, is right around the corner from two ice cream and frozen yogurt shops! Just sayin'.

Copyright Lore Raymond, 2017. No portion of the blog post or information on this site may be reprinted, re-used or copied to another site without prior written permission from the author.

12 comments:

  1. Our family has always had homemade ice cream even as a child. So I would say ---anything homemade and cranked by hand especially.

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  2. How delish! I made homemade ice cream for the first time at summer camp and loved the fun of it all.

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  3. How fun! As a kid my mother would make homemade vanilla bean ice cream that I absolutely loved and today I am partial to Salted Carmel gelato!

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  4. Love vanilla iceream still and fruity ones , Also love the banana coconut iceream i make sometimes with berries or cacao

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    Replies
    1. As always, you're a combo...a rainbow...like the colors on your web site, Suzie.

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  5. Interesting! Love coffee and hazelnut gelato! Excuse me, I'm suddenly hungry :)

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  6. I'm with Tom Hanks and Earnest Hemingway - although I have the same birthday as J.K. Rowlings! My true fave is Salted Chocolate Truffle mixed with Salted Caramel. Just thinking about it makes my mouth water!

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  7. My favorite ice-cream is restricted by those that are lactose free. I'm so grateful for Breyers Chocolate! Yes, that's my current fav!

    What a fun post -- love it!

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    Replies
    1. Love that chocolate,too, however I can get it.

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