Happy National Ice Cream Day!

Hope you have had a great National Ice Cream Day (and hope you are still celebrating -- there's still time...)!

Thanks, Ronald Reagan, for creating this holiday for us...whether or not we liked your politics as a whole (or were too young to remember you as president) this is a legacy you left behind that we can all agree on!

From Wikipedia: "National Ice Cream Month is held in each year in July in the United States. Ronald Reagan designated July as National Ice Cream Month in 1984.[1] He also named the third Sunday in July as National Ice Cream Day. Reagan recognized the popularity of ice cream in the United States (90% of the nation's population consumes ice cream) and stated that these two events should be observed with 'appropriate ceremonies and activities.'"

I'm celebrating by cleaning out a carton of Banana Cream Pie Ice Cream. Recipe to follow this week!


Ice cream image by ctechs at stockxchng.

Happy National Ice Cream Day

Our good friend Ronald Reagan who declared July to be National Ice Cream Month also declared the third Sunday in July to be National Ice Cream Day.

Rumor has it he was also a huge fan of jelly beans. In his honor, I made my Vanilla Bean Jelly Bean ice cream...

I have made this three times so far and each was a different kind of jelly bean.

I made a vanilla base, but instead of just using a vanilla extract, I use a vanilla bean paste (because I am too lazy for all the scraping of the vanilla beans) so I still get the specks of seeds.

The three jelly beans that I have tried are:

1. Regular, run of the mill Brach's Jelly Beans (the most common type around at Easter)
2. Starburst Jelly Beans (by special request of my sister)
   
3. Cold Stone Creamery Ice Cream Creations Jelly Beans (I mean, c'mon, that's just a given!)
   

The key here is to make sure your beans aren't too big -- if I am using the large beans, I cut them in half. Also to make sure you don't tell your dentist you made and ate this ice cream -- the jelly beans become pretty hard and chewy.

Having tried them all, my vote is for option 1.

Happy National Ice Cream Day!

P.S. For a nice history of National Ice Cream Month, The Ice Cream Bloke writes a nice history on the Food Channel website.

Photo of Cold Stone Creamery Ice Cream Creations Jelly Beans from the Jelly Belly site.