Feel Good Friday: All You Need Is Love and Ice Cream

All you need is love, and maybe a little ice cream

Feel Good Friday is a regular series to give you a smile, a chuckle, or a nugget of wisdom to get your weekend off on the right foot!

All you need is love, and maybe a little ice cream

This week I learned that there’s some disagreement over the official date of National Ice Cream Day. The horror!

My friend cited Wikipedia and celebrated this all-important holiday on July 15, while the International Dairy Foods Association says it’s July 20 this year. 

The solution? Focus on the fact that all of July is, without discrepancy, National Ice Cream Month, and enjoy some cold, creamy goodness as often as your taste buds would like.

Here are a few random facts about the beloved summer dessert.

  • In America, the average person consumes 48 pints of ice cream per year (and I’m thinking I might be above average!).
  • The largest ice cream sundae weighed in at 24 tons. 
  • Ice cream cones were invented during the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis. The high demand for the treat forced the ice cream vendor to seek assistance from the nearby waffle vendor. Oh, happy coupling! 
  • Over her lifespan, a single dairy cow will produce enough milk for 9,000 gallons of ice cream.
  • That’s because a cow’s udder can hold between 25 and 50 lbs. of milk! Say it with me, breastfeeding mamas: OUCH! 
  • A brain freeze happens when the cold ice cream touches the roof of your mouth, causing blood vessels in your head to dilate.
  • Ben and Jerry’s has an actual graveyard in Vermont for retired ice cream flavors, so you can go mourn Peanut Butter and Jelly or leave flowers for Rainforest Crunch. 
  • The most popular ice cream flavor? Plain jane vanilla.
  • February 4th is National Ice Cream for Breakfast Day (which I’ll probably be combining with my regular Breakfast for Dinner celebrations!).

Are you celebrating National Ice Cream Day/Month? What’s your favorite flavor? Favorite topping? 


17 responses to “Feel Good Friday: All You Need Is Love and Ice Cream”

  1. My favorite flavor is baskin robbins chocolate peanut butter…my favorite topping peanut butter (of course)! I never knew that’s why we get brain freeze. Cool.

  2. Hooray for a whole month celebrating ice cream! My favorite is Ben and Jerry’s New York Super Fudge Chunk (which I haven’t seen in stores lately, which worries me). A few weeks ago, I had some of the best homemade strawberry ice cream which I have been dreaming about ever since…

  3. The last birthday present I got from my father, before he died, was an ice cream maker. Since then, about 90% of the ice cream I’ve consumed has been homemade.

    For recipes, I swear by The Perfect Scoop, by David Lebovitz. I have the recipe for vanilla ice cream memorized (though I cheat a little and use vanilla bean paste rather than whole vanilla bean). The chocolate is my favorite, but the rest of the fam loves vanilla, and it does play better with other desserts. For the 4th of July, I made a pound cake that we topped with homemade vanilla ice cream and homemade cherry topping. Yum!

    I will confess, though, that my husband and I share a weakness for self-serve fro-yo. Orange Leaf is our favorite; I usually get peanut butter and brownie batter mixed together. Now that our son is old enough to share, I get a little extra fruit on top to keep it healthy. 😉

    • I love that there’s a sentimental factor to your homemade ice cream. It sounds delicious! I will be checking out that David Lebovitz book.

  4. MMM…. ice cream! It’s definitely a favorite around my house, although I might start going out for ice cream more since there’s an old fashioned soda fountain place in my new town that sells ice cream cones for 5 cents! (Yes, you read that right.)

    I go back and forth between liking fruit flavors best, and chocolatey crunchy goodness like Rocky Road.

  5. I am watching what I’m eating right now and really trying to slim down, so I’m not eating much ice cream these days. But having said that, ice cream is one of my favorite desserts. Eric’s favorite flavor is vanilla and that seriously baffles me! I need chocolate and coffee flavors with something crunchy or peanut buttery, otherwise it’s not worth the calories! Happy Friday!

  6. What a fun post! I had no idea it was National Ice Cream month, but I guess you could say we’ve been celebrating. 😉 It is a regular weekly outing for us in the summer time.

  7. I don’t even want to tell you how many times we went out for ice cream at the beach last week. Ok, almost every day. I don’t have a favorite, but it must have chocolate. Usually the more the better!

  8. Oh wow interesting facts, especially about brain freeze! I never knew why we got those. Good to avoid the roof of my mouth in the future!

  9. I am celebrating! I got great ice cream at Cape Cod yesterday.
    It is a dream of fine to go to Ben & Jerry’s for the graveyard tour. It’s about three hours from my house. Maybe I can do it this week!

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