There's something about a cold metal spoon, especially the long ones for parfait glasses, to shovel up ice cream. The metal probably isn't helping the ozone layer or saving panda bears, but it's just one of those things you leave alone. As biodegradable food packaging has become more available, more ice creameries are offering specialized bowls and utensils instead. You can spot it right away: the slightly gritty mouth feel and off-white color. It was made of corn, potato starch, soy oil, or something else that sounds edible, and it belongs in a separate trash bin....
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There is an ice cream shop en route to the elementary school I used to attend called the Bubbling Brook. We used to stop there on many an afternoon, the entire carpool spilling out of the minivan to line up for what "The Bub" did best: rainbow sherbet (heavy on the raspberry), or a chocolate-vanilla twist with chocolate dip, which inevitably cracked and dripped down faces and shirts and onto leather-upholstered backseats. But the Bub was a seasonal place, and I can still taste the bitterness of the disappointment—just as clearly as I can the sweetness of that sherbert—of the day when we drove by only to find that it had closed for the winter, the windows through which the...
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