Ice Cream

 My husband sometimes meets celebrities, but really the only one who has excited him is Jeni, owner of Jeni's Ice Cream.

Certain stories from this encounter have become a kind of Biblical text in my house. Each time I hear one of the stories, I act like I'm hearing it for the first time.

This teenager was working at the counter, and he said, "If you come back tomorrow, be sure to note that we close at 8...." And Jeni gave him a deadpan look and said, "Who do you think *I* am?"

Also:

Jeni invented salted caramel. Before her, it truly did not exist. (I have some doubts about that factoid, but I keep quiet.)

Also:

Jeni is a close friend of Joe Biden's. Of course, one thing we know about Joe is this: The man loves his ice cream.....

In my house, there is a partial ban on fruit-flavored ice creams; like the writer Anne Fadiman, I feel there shouldn't even be a hint of anything "healthy" in an ice-cream flavor. The only legitimate options are the following: chocolate, vanilla, caramel, coffee, mint (and certain affiliated combinations). My son claims to like a strawberry cone, but he'll eat just two bites before losing interest. I think, possibly, he likes the pinkish-red color, because it reminds him of Elmo from "Sesame Street."

We are a family of Broadway wannabes, and one tune we often return to is Lea Salonga's aria, "Vanilla Ice Cream," from "She Loves Me." (The song ends with a triple-rhyme burst of pyrotechnics...."It's almost like a dream--and strange as it may seem--he came to offer me....vanilla ice cream!")

I think the song is a classic because it captures an important truth: Ice cream is an ideal expression of love. The end of each of my date nights is ice cream. On one occasion, my husband and I tried to endure the Nicholas Hoult version of "Superman," and halfway through, we were delighted to realize that no one had a gun to our head. We could make our own rules. We fled from the theater; we planted ourselves at Cold Stone Creamery.

All thoughts of Krypton flew from our brains. Large posters advertised bizarre "seasonal" flavors: "Lucky Charms Bubble Gum," "A Taste of Dubai." The great thing about Cold Stone is that a "small" portion can feed ten to twenty families. We dug in.