National Ice Cream Day

Today is another of my favorite days – National Ice Cream Day! Today I can celebrate with wild abandon and no guilt—not that I ever feel guilty when eating ice cream, but today I can say, “Hey! I’m celebrating here!” That will calm the masses for all of ten seconds after which, they’ll expect me to share! Aw, man!

Enjoy your favorite ice cream today – no excuses! With dairy free, gluten free, sugar-free, and dye free ice creams available, no one need miss out. Of course, I prefer my ice cream homemade… and pistachio, but offer me store-bought any flavor and see if I turn it down! (Which will only happen if pumpkin or marshmallow are involved! Ew!)

What’s your favorite ice cream flavor?

bowl of ice cream

National Ice Cream Day is observed each year on the 3rd Sunday in July and is a part of National Ice Cream Month. This day is a fun celebration enjoyed with a bowl, cup or cone filled with your favorite flavor of ice cream.

Thousands of years ago, people in the Persian Empire would put snow in a bowl, pour grape-juice concentrate over it and eat it as a treat. They did this when the weather was hot and used the snow saved in the cool-keeping underground chambers known as “yakhchal”, or taken from the snowfall that remained at the top of mountains by the summer capital.

It is believed that ice cream was first introduced into the United States by Quaker colonists who brought their ice cream recipes with them. Their ice cream was sold at shops in New York and other cities during the colonial era.

Ben Franklin, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson enjoyed ice cream.
1813 -First Lady Dolley Madison served ice cream at the Inaugural Ball.
1832 – African American confectioner, Augustus Jackson, created multiple ice cream recipes as well as a superior technique to manufacture ice cream.
1843 – Philadelphian, Nancy Johnson, received the first U.S. patent for a small-scale hand-cranked ice cream freezer.
1920 – Harry Burt puts the first ice cream trucks on the streets.

HOW TO OBSERVE

Enjoy National Ice Cream Day by sharing some with your family and friends! Post on social media using #NationalIceCreamDay.

HISTORY

In 1984, President Ronald Reagan proclaimed July as National Ice Cream Month and established National Ice Cream Day as the third Sunday in the month of July.

ice cream cones

Ice Cream Trivia

The average American eats 26 liters (45.8 pints) of ice-cream a year.

Worldwide, around 15 billion liters (3.3 billion gallons) of ice-cream are consumed every year, enough to fill 5,000 Olympic swimming pools.

According to Nasa, ice-cream is among the top three items most missed by astronauts on space missions. The others are pizza and fizzy drinks.

Hawaii and Wisconsin are the only US states with laws governing ice-cream container size.

The last thing Elvis Presley ate was four scoops of ice-cream and six chocolate chip cookies.

Marco Polo brought back from China descriptions of a sherbet dessert.

The cone didn’t appear until 1904 when a Syrian waffle maker at the St. Louis World’s Fair began rolling his pastries into horns to help an ice cream vendor who had run out of dishes.

The idea of the ice cream cone had been patented a year earlier, in 1903, by an Italian in New York City, but the fair popularized it.

Farmers in Vermont used to feed leftovers provided by Ben and Jerry’s to their hogs. The hogs didn’t seem to care for Mint Oreo Cookie.

Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was part of the team that first invented the method of making soft serve ice cream.