Wednesday, July 4, 2018

What's Your Favorite Flavor of Ice Cream?

Spinning Your Gold Blog: Words that Open Hearts & Inspire Actions

“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? There's 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 starting 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 invites me 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 Fort Wagner in the Civil War enjoyed as a child on his New Hampshire apple orchard?

It's fun to wonder what other sheroes enjoyed like Ann Hasseltine Judson, Julia Tarrant Barron, Amelia Earhart, Eleanor Roosevelt, Helen Keller, Golda Meir, and Mother Teresa. I'm also curious about the favorite ice cream flavors of writers like Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Rumi, Isaak Dinesen, Hafiz, or Peace Pilgrim. 

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 ice cream matches above?
P.S. Your special invitation awaits you to join me and other sister writers in my free, private Facebook group, the Writer's VisionQuest for only women. Our intention is sharing and giving resources to "transform your words into somewhere brilliant."

P.P.S. Visit my Amazon Author Page to learn about upcoming workshops and events, and books to enjoy for your summer reading.


Copyright Lore Raymond, 2018. 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.

15 comments:

  1. As a child I loved vanilla, my mom loved chocolate, I hated it. Now I love chocolate, Gavriel loved vanilla and hates chocolate :) I make my own ice cream now with my vitamix! All natural, no sugar added and totally yummylicious!

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    Replies
    1. How interesting how your tastes changed, Rachel. Did you see what the meaning of these flavors represent in personality traits?

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  2. My mom used to make homemade ice cream and vanilla was my favorite! I love that it is the Dalai Lama’s favorite too!

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    1. No surpirse there that you and the Dalai Lama would be aligned! Homemade ic ecream...a rare treat for sure.

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  3. That's easy - strawberry. And the miraculous revelation of the deliciousness of that flavor was, indeed, set in early childhood.

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  4. Like Kelley I grew up with homemade vanilla icecream- still my fave followed by chocolate and pistachio

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  5. You took me in a different direction. When my son was a baby, we lived in a small town near Burlington, VT. At that time, Ben and Jerry's was located in a former garage. They used lawn mower engines to power hand-crank ice cream makers. Thanks for a sweet memory.

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    1. Sweet memories for sure! And you're welcome, Andrea. I lived in Plattsburgh, NY and girlfriends and I would ferry across Lake Champlain to Burlington to taste the ice cream a thier first store!

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  6. Vanilla vanilla. That is when I do eat ice cream. I love the flavour

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  7. I love this! How fun! Yes, it's true. Chocolate all the way!

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  8. I agree about being set from our childhood. So I’m not of sweets desserts person. Here are the ice creams flavors I look forward to in an ice cream or shake even better! Yummmm. Guava, Grapenut and Coffee Ice cream (small portion of coffee ice cream). Pomegranate with blueberries and pineapple in a shake. My inherent bias is to a childhood place in Jamaica and that Devon House Ice Cream

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  9. As a young child, vanilla ice cream was wonderful. Later, butter pecan was a favorite. To celebrate the 4th, today I tried a scoop of organic ice cream with natural lime flavor. It was delicious!

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  10. Your Fourth of July ice cream sounds delish! I will have to try the lime flavor.

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  11. Love ice cream! How can we live without it :)

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