Samhain Publishing Ltd Weblog

Ice Cream and Me

I’ve always had an ice cream addiction. In fact, as I started writing this blog, I switched my iPod to Van Morrison’s “Crazy Love,” because it’s the kind of dreamy song which goes along with eating the creamy wonder food which punctuated every personal success I’ve ever had. Ice cream for me has always meant good times and if the good times are gone, then it was what I turned to when I needed to banish away the bad.

Van Morrison is singing:
Take away my trouble, take away my grief
Take away my heartache, in the night like a thief
She gives me love, love, love, love, crazy love

If the “she” in the song was ice cream, it would be our song.

But a little over three months ago, I was diagnosed with a strange illness which left my body unable to break down certain proteins. Not only did gluten (the protein in wheat) become forbidden, but casein (the protein in most dairy products) went on the list as well.

Ice cream was gone – possibly forever and ever. There is a chance that my body might fix itself, but I’d let things go for so long, my body sees those proteins as dangerous and works hard to get them out of my system pronto if I eat anything with them in it. To say I was devastated would be an understatement. “It’s just certain foods,” my husband said reasonably to me when I started crying for the tenth time in the last three months. How could I explain that I’d tied my emotions to food? Oh sure, some of you might say that’s unhealthy, but it came as a blow, and no matter how much I told myself I was being unreasonable, I felt myself dropping into a weird sort of malaise, almost like a form of depression you might have if you lost a friend. Silly, but there you have it.

But today, in the organic foods section (which is just about the only place kind enough to tell you what’s really in the food your buying), this tiny pint of “ice cream” caught my eye. It was right next to other real ice creams, so why I stopped to look, I’ll never know. But I saw it down on the bottom shelf almost hidden by the seam of the cooler door. I took it out and read the carton. No dairy, no gluten, no all kinds of other stuff that I don’t care about at this point because….excitement begins to build…. I just might get to eat something that looks like the real deal.

Like a heroin addict, I stood shaking, wondering if it actually tasted like real ice cream too.

I put it in my basket and headed for the checkout, forgetting completely about my husband shaving cream. The carton already felt a bit soft and I couldn’t take a chance on it melting before I made it home.

Now, I sit typing to all of you having eaten all four servings (800 calories – oh. my. god!!!!). It wasn’t bad, either. Creamy. Smooth. Nice flavor. Perhaps a bit of a strange after-taste, but those living on a diet of bread made out of nut or rice flour will tell you that the gluten-free “bagel” might have a hole, but one taste lets you know you aren’t eating a bagel. Overall, it’s a fantastic substitute for real thing.

So what’s the point of this ramble? I wish I could say I learned my lesson about ice cream binging. You’d think after all this time I wouldn’t do it, but while I always swear I won’t do it again, I know I will. Instead, I’ve learned that even though it sometimes looks like the good times are over and the ice cream won’t ever be mine again, if I can just be open and ready and watching, I’ll find something just as good sitting on the bottom shelf, hidden from view. Good things are out there. I should never lose hope.