tool name

Saturday, Jul. 25, 2009

Debbie Croft: Summertime in full swing

Jumpin' catfish!

It's time for the La Grange Odd Fellows' second annual catfish dinner fundraiser.

(Try saying that five times in a row as fast as you can!)

The menu features deep fried catfish, cornbread, coleslaw, corn on the cob, coffee, iced tea, lemonade and ice cream cups for dessert -- all for $10 a person. Sodas will be available to purchase for $1 each.

There will also be a raffle drawing -- $1 buys one ticket and $5 buys 6 -- plus a 50-50 Poker Card Match Draw at $5 a card.

Dinner will be served from 4 to 7 p.m. on Aug. 1. For more information, call Ken Crum at (209) 853-2101 or Chris Stevenson at (209) 853-2128, or e-mail: renwah@sonnet.com. The IOOF Hall on Main Street in La Grange is located on Highway 132, just east of Highway 59.

This weekend, the world's smelliest festival is taking place, right under our noses in California's smelliest city (where steaks can be marinated by simply hanging them on a clothesline, somebody said). The Gilroy Garlic Festival has become one of the top 10 food festivals in the United States. Garlic lovers in the Central Valley won't mind a two-hour drive to the Silicon Valley for this 30th annual event.

For $12 a person per day (about half that for children and seniors), the event includes cooking demonstrations, arts and crafts, live music, dancing and family entertainment. Exotic dishes are prepared as famous chefs compete in a "Cook Off," and food vendors abound along Gourmet Alley with both garlic and non-garlic delicacies. Tickets may be purchased online at www.gilroygarlicfestival.com or at the gate (cash only, please). A map and directions are also available at the Web site. Nobody there will mind the bad breath, and gum is handed out for free, I've been told. So, if you like garlic, Gilroy's the place to go for garlic prawns, garlic french fries and even garlic ice cream.

Speaking of ice cream, July is National Ice Cream Month, thanks to President Ronald Reagan. In 1984, the president made this designation, calling for Americans to observe the day with events and "appropriate ceremonies and activities." According to the International Dairy Foods Association, 90 percent of the nation's population enjoys ice cream, generating annual sales of over $21 billion.

When Rite Aid opened in Mariposa last year, with their affordable scoops of Thrifty brand ice cream, Mariposans flocked to the new store! One of the employees said she'd never seen a town with so many people in it who liked ice cream.

The best ice cream, though, isn't cheap, because it's made with real cream, and without the mono- and diglycerides (translation: fats that act as emulsifiers). Although, with cartons shrinking in size as we speak, it's probably cheaper now to make your own. (We were given an ice cream maker as a wedding gift 30 summers ago, and we've made sure to keep one in the house ever since.)

Can you guess what American's top five flavors are? Vanilla, chocolate, butter pecan, strawberry and Neapolitan.

I think the survey was taken back East, though, because whenever we've had company at our homes here in the West, we almost always serve ice cream. And some of our friends' and family members' most-requested flavors aren't even on the survey list. Like mint-chocolate chip, mocha-almond-fudge, rocky road, that orange sherbet and vanilla cream concoction from my childhood days, and to-die-for triple fudge brownie. And during the holidays, who can resist peppermint, pumpkin and eggnog ice cream? (We won't talk about weird ice cream flavors from around the world, because some of them are enough to make you gag. You can look them up on your own if you'd like.)

In conclusion, if I could take one thing with me when I go to heaven, it would be ice cream. By then I wouldn't have to worry about calories or fat or too much sugar or high cholesterol or ugly zits and gargantuan hips or maintaining a balanced diet and getting enough exercise. I'd get to eat it every day, all day, for the rest of eternity! (I hope you'll pardon my playful theological twist on the "hereafter.")

It's summertime, and as our dairy gal columnist, Amanda De Jager Friedman says, sometimes the simple pleasures are the best ones to enjoy this time of year. Ice cream is definitely a simple and delicious pleasure!

Debbie Croft writes about life in the foothill communities. She can be reached at composed@tds.net, or at her Sun-Star blog, City Girl, Country Life.