All the ice cream I ate in Spain

Iberia Airlines even gave me ice cream on the plane

We had something very like this for our last dessert in Spain. Only a million times better, even. With a peach coulis or something and this crazy, icy, supercharged vanilla ice cream.

Hello friends,

Maybe things have been a bit serious around here lately. Well, serious is good, and I’ve been in a serious mood during a difficult few months. So that’s okay. But I also still like things like Muppet songs by shanty bands and other fun stuff and so I thought I’d share a little something about my delightful recent ice cream experiences.

Since my 75-ish-mile pilgrimage, I’ve been joyfully reset into that mode of eating that is less about restriction and more about “when can I get more calories, oh look, something to eat, I will eat it and enjoy it and then move on.” That is, a functional, joyful, non-obsessive approach to food. I’ve often been that way while nursing a baby and it’s a just fabulous feeling, but of course being a writer who is now not nursing a baby is not really conducive to burning off carefree calories. However, 75 miles of walking is conducive to this, as is the walking I’ve been doing since getting home.

Also, I don’t care. Ice cream forever!

Why, yesterday I went on a nice long walk and after pausing to eat a few wineberries pilfered from the border of the national park, I also stopped to buy one of those cookie ice cream sandwiches from a 7-11:

Was it healthy? YES!!! Because I was overheated and it was joyful and I didn’t obsess. Ah, to be free of obsession! What a great gift that is in the short whiles in which it happens. Perhaps my ongoing at-home Camino will continue to teach me to live in this way.

So, for what I hope will be our mutual enjoyment, here is a run-down of my Camino ice cream experience:

1. First, one non-ice cream note: On the plane ride over, I was not given ice cream. However, Iberia Air gets an honorable mention for giving me a full-size Kit-Kat.

   

2. As I mentioned in an earlier post, there are cafes all along the Camino, more or less. They are excellent for acquiring water or Coke or beer or a snack and for providing restrooms. But more importantly, they also all sell ice cream bars. What a delight to be met with a nearly entirely new array of ice cream bars, as sold in Europe! I bought one each walking day, more or less. I bought this one twice, for reasons that should be obvious:

   

3. On one of the last walking days, I was alone for a good stretch and really struggling with the pain in my feet. I was getting pretty dizzy and, having drunk up my electrolytes already and eated the last remnants of a bag of chips I had bought for their salt, I finally came to a little cafe where I could at least buy some more water. They also had Snickers ice cream bars — Oh, the joy! — and so I asked for one of those, too.

   But — “We are out,” they said. “Only Mars bars left.”

   Are you kidding me? How long has it been since I’ve had an ice cream Mars bar, if ever? I downed that puppy so fast. It was heaven:

   

4. Finally, Iberia came through spectacularly on my flight home with an actual frozen Magnum bar for every passenger 6 hours into the flight. I was pretending to be asleep when they were handing them out (why, how do you get through an 8-hour flight?) and then practically jumped out of my seat when I heard my Spanish seatmates crackling some sort of wrapper. “DID I MISS IT????” I cried, and the Spanish seatmates obligingly flagged down the attendant and I got my Magnum bar. Bliss:

   

   Alas, now I am home, and the European ice creams are only dreams to me now. Still, we have these babies, of which Europeans know nothing, poor souls:

   

   And there’s always the ice cream maker.

   What is your favorite way to enjoy ice cream?

   Happy summering!

   Dixie