Happy National Ice-cream Day! It’s summer, it’s hot and you hopefully are on a vacation or at least have some time off. Then what is the most natural thing to eat, if not ice-cream! So, let’s begin feeling into which flavor you prefer. In the summertime when I grew up and we often went travelling during summer, we had Italian sorbet. It’s a kind of ice-cream made of frozen fruit and without any dairy. Perfect to cool off with after dinner or as a treat in the afternoon. Lemon, raspberry or chocolate are my favorites. 

Fast forward some years, and I found a place where they sell their own home-made flavors like mint-chocolate, crushed candies, and even champagne. It really tasted like it! Eating it in a fresh baked cone, made it even more delicious. Then there were the combinations with whipped cream, chocolate sauce and even a creamy marshmallow bun on top, making it into its own sweet meal. Or the kind of swirl that you roll around in sprinkles. Have you had those?

After that came Frozen yoghurt, and in Hawaii, I had Shave ice and Mochi ice-cream.

Then I realized that my stomach was too sensitive, so I began eating lactose-free and vegan alternatives, like Oatly. In Sweden, it’s very common to have strawberry ice-cream when you’re little. As a grown-up, I prefer vanilla with some fresh strawberries instead. But does that mean that I’m vanilla?

For me, ice-cream is like a snack or a dessert, but rarely with any emotional attachment to it. 

In most American movies, we see a sad girl, or a girl with her bestie, gulping down a bucket of ice-cream as part of her grieving ritual from a break-up. Perhaps there is where it begins with the emotional eating that is ruining it for so many. I think most people can be divided into two categories, at least women, either you eat less or not at all when you’re sad and upset, or you eat too much when you are. I’ve never eaten when I was sad. I do snack more when I’m very tired or stressed though. 

I’ve never been overweight until a couple of years ago, when I had to spend more than two years locked up in a psychiatric ward, so I’ve always belonged to the lucky few who can be skinny and eat whatever I want anyway. Now, I think about it more, but having a good health comes before checking the scale. And as someone with food intolerances, being able to eat at all, is a blessing. 

I also have had ice-creams on two different dates in Honolulu many years ago. One with Joel, who took me to his favorite part of the beach to watch the sunset after we had driven to see the view on the Tantalus. And another with Jesse, the evening before he was leaving back for Minnesota, we went down to the ice-cream bar in Waikiki and walked back to the hostel. Would a guy in Sweden ever take out a girl for ice-cream? I have never heard of it. Maybe because it’s so cold here, normally. Now we’ve had a heatwave here too, with some 82 degrees Fahrenheit. But anyway, as part of a meal or to cozy up with in the couch while watching a movie perhaps, but never as a date by itself. I enjoyed both.

So, when do you eat ice-cream and why do you? Do you eat it to stuff down emotions, to comfort yourself, or to enjoy a treat? And do you judge others by the flavors they choose?

To me, having vanilla is the easiest to pair with different berries. And it’s the simplest thing. It’s not at all, that I feel coy or bland, but that I sometimes prefer simplicity. I even think there’s an element of elegance to that. I might indeed prefer predictable routines, to alleviate some of my stress, but am I someone who isn’t adventurous? Who moved to Hawaii on my own? And even have had sex in English as my second language, and with an African American guy. Not so vanilla, I think. 

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