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Everything Dessert Related

136K views 3K replies 32 participants last post by  Howard 
#1 ·
After viewing all the delicious meals in the "Red Meat" thread, Over here, you can post or comment on all the after dinner desserts you can think of. From cakes, pies, ice cream, cookies or just whatever you like.


How about a delicious hot apple pie right out the oven?
 
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#1,033 · (Edited by Moderator)
Looking forward to that story indeed! I miss HoJo's to this day, along with the peppermint stick ice cream with hot fudge sauce at Schrafft's.
As noted, my dad grew up in the Depression resulting in my upbringing being one of "you don't need that," "do you know how much that costs?" being said so often and definitively, that I all but stopped asking for things while still early in grammar school. A dollar did not exit his wallet casually.

A few other relevant details, my dad had a sweet tooth (inherited by moi) and we lived in New Jersey, which means, yes, the New Jersey Turnpike was a big part of our lives. It's also relevant that my dad's idea of going somewhere in a car was to not waste time, so stops were discouraged: it was not about the journey, it was about getting from point A to point B efficiently.

But there is one more critical piece of information to this tale: very close to "our" exit on the NJ Turnpike (the jokes are appropriate) was a very large and old Howard Johnson's restaurant. On TV, once a year, there was Oz; in my life, there was the spire-topped Howard Johnson's near exit 9. Try as I did, I could not find a picture of that particular, sadly, now-torn-down icon of the chain, but it looked very much like this one even in the '70s.
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You've probably figured this out by now, but car trips with my dad were not fun, cheery events and there was none of this "the kid gets to choose the radio station" stuff. Also, superfluous talk - which seemed to be defined as anything I said - was discouraged, so these were pretty grim affairs. I became very good at entertaining myself by noting details (to myself) about passing cars or buildings, etc.

Now, if anyone has stayed with me through this preamble, we're coming to the ice-cream part of the story, which is driven by two facts: my dad liked ice-cream and my dad really liked Howard Johnson's ice-cream.

So, quite often, the return from some weary car trip would be perked up by the sight of the HoJo's spire and this oddly insouciant comment from my dad, "let's pick up few containers of ice-cream from Howard Johnson's." Always with efficiency being the key, dad would then pull in and idle near the front door, take (in those days) one five dollar bill or several ones from his wallet (no, Hallelujah music didn't play when his wallet opened, but it should have), hand them to me and tell me to "get two containers of the mint chocolate chip and one more that you choose." And always, just as I got out of the car, he'd, sternly, holler out, "and bring me all the change." [Note, not once in my life, as I wanted to keep living, did I not bring him all the change, but the refrain never went away.]

Only if you've lived it can you understand the joy of being a kid, in the enervating '70s, in HoJo's, looking through the take-out ice-cream section knowing you were getting three containers (I usually chose butter-crunch for the other flavor) and that they'd be dessert for the next several evenings. Heck, maybe a bowl would even turn into a mid-day or late-night snack.

To this day, mint chocolate-chip ice-cream, no matter what brand, immediately takes me back to the 1970s, car trips, that old wooden Howard Johnsons and my dad oddly stopping and handing me money to buy ice-cream.
 
#1,054 ·
I'm planning on taking the family into the woods to go camping all Thanksgiving week, so I'll be cooking Thanksgiving dinner on coals and over campfires (a cast iron dutch oven to roast a Turkey is the plan, and it had better be good since I'll have to schlep a turkey and a dutch oven through the woods!)

Thinking about desserts, a cobbler is the obvious thing which comes to mind (pot and fire), but for *me*, "cobbler" is simply a fancy term for "bed for scoop of ice cream" (which will not be available.)

Any of our intrepid explorer types have a good idea for desserts in the bush? Beyond the obvious (s'mores) of course?

DH
 
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