Reasons to be cheerful: Part III

Big congrats to Mya and Jo Beaufoix for entering the competitionette. I loved both your entries. I realize that most people couldn’t cope with competing as well as registering the news that I am signing off from blogging for a while. I should know by now – one thing that requires mental attention per blog post; that’s all we bloggers can cope with.

Now, back to my Reasons to be cheerful: Part III. It goes

Hammersmith Palee, the Bolshoi Ballee,
Dijon mustard, Freddy’s Frozen Custard.

See. You’d never have guessed that, would you?

Dijon mustard is easily available here, and obviously that is a reason to be cheerful (and let’s face it, not much else rhymes with ‘custard’). I don’t need to tell you much else about Dijon mustard. But when it comes to Freddy’s Frozen Custard, well, I could blog on for hours.

“Frozen Custard” says the notice on the wall “is a frequently misunderstood product”. Now, dear Bloggy Friend, lest you be one of the many who misunderstand frozen custard, let me tell you more. According to the notice, it is like ice cream, but the recipe uses more eggs, and a time-tested process that closely replicates the hand-churning method of old. This forces air out of the mixture, minimising the formation of ice crystals. Just in case you aren’t jumping round the room with sheer cheerfulness, let me point out the significance. “This combination prevents the product from melting too quickly and allows it to be served at a higher temperature than ice cream.” Still haven’t quite got it? Do you remember how, when you were a child, you used to mix your ice cream in the bowl round and round and round, as quickly as possible, to soften it to a lovely semi-runny semi-solid consistency? Frozen custard is just that temperature and consistency, but creamier, and you don’t even get told off by your parents for making a racket with your spoon. What it means is that this is the perfect product for people who like ice cream but who have sensitive teeth. Like me. You don’t have to eat it half a teaspoon at a time, holding it carefully on your tongue in the very middle of your mouth, till your body temperature has warmed it up enough to risk allowing it past your touchy back molars. And it's very creamy. Very very creamy.

You can have frozen custard either as a sundae with a choice of toppings, or as a concrete – which means that the toppings are whizzed in, somewhat like a McFlurry (although truly, I hesitate to use that word in the same blog post as frozen custard, as the two could only be compared by the deeply unimaginative). So, you might hear a customer order “a large vanilla concrete with marshmallows and rainbow sprinkles”. It sounds like a Mafia threat, I think. My favourite order is “the Signature Turtle” – both for taste and for obscurity of title (although once you’ve had one or two, you do begin to see a small resemblance to a turtle, and the pecan nuts round the edge look a bit turtley too). Of course the portions are huge, so that even a mini concrete would be enough to point a small wall with, but experience shows there’s just no future in expecting reasonable size servings here in the US. You can’t blame Freddy’s for that.

Frozen custard is a frequently misunderstood, but totally delicious, product. It wouldn’t, however, have the same charm if it wasn’t Freddy’s. When you go to Freddy’s, you feel his presence. The décor and ambiance are nothing special, but on the walls and on each table are black and white photos of Freddy, his lovely wife Norma (sic), and their four children. Each time you go, you can sit by another little window into his life. Or if you have a blog to write, you can wander round, looking at the pictures and reading the captions, intruding rudely into the personal space of families and friends sharing intimate moments over a frozen custard. There are photos of Freddy and the family at Christmas, the children sitting by the tree in patterned sweaters, their hair smartly brushed. There are photos of Freddy and the family visiting his brother in California, standing self-consciously on the beach in waist-high swimming trunks and squinting at the camera. There are photos of Freddy as a young man, in uniform, and as an older man, visiting a veteran’s memorial in the Pacific. There are photos of Freddy on a tractor. Freddy spent most of his life as a farmer, but was always interested in frozen custard, and over the years, refined and perfected his recipe. He opened his first outlet in 2004, and celebrated his 77th birthday by opening his second soon after. There are now several across four states. What could epitomize the American dream more neatly than Freddy’s life? He served his country in wartime, spent most of his life running his farm with his wife and four children at his side, dreaming dreams of the perfect frozen dessert, and in his retirement, became an entrepreneur and melted his frozen dreams into reality. He must have a bit of help – a burgeoning army of marketing people and corporate executives. I imagine he keeps them all in line. He graduated in 1949 from Wichita University with a degree in Accountancy (there’s a photo), and I’m sure has a good head for business. I’m told that Freddy often visits his outlets, so I hope I might bump into him one day. I’ll buy him a Signature Turtle.

You must watch out for Freddy’s Frozen Custards in Britain – it can only be a matter of time before they arrive. Or you can go to the website, click on ‘Franchise’, and put in an application to open your own one. If Freddy, in his mid-70s, found the energy to launch the chain, what's your excuse for not opening a local one?

Well now, nearly time for me to go off on my blogging break. I’d just like to remind you of two things I said in my last post. First, it’s intended to be a break, not a complete departure, and I am planning to be back at some point. I’ve set up that clever RSS feed thingy so you can sign up to know when I’m writing again (actually, it's so clever, that it had set itself up already by default – amazing). Second, I’m still going to be around reading your blogs and commenting.

Thank you all for your kind comments, and for being such wonderful Bloggy Friends. I’m sure you know how much I’ve enjoyed and valued, and needed, the fun of being part of it all over the past 6 months.