Ice-Cream Insights II

I hurried back from class to meet Auntie Xiao at the appointed time but she was a no-show, and there was no sign of a prospective flatmate either. I left a message and got some lunch, and on the way back stopped dead when I saw this.


There's a new player in town when it comes to street food, and it's name is Mr. Whippy-style ice-cream.

According to weather.com it's a couple of degrees above freezing with windchill right now. It would take a madman or a dedicated food-oriented blogger to eat an ice-cream in these kinds of conditions!

"怎么卖?" I asked Miss Whippy, who sported a frilly pink apron and looked cold.

"有五角的，也有一块的 (you can pay 3p or 7p)" came the response.

"Well, let's go crazy, shall we? 一块!"

She flicked a switch and a little red light came on as the machine rumbled into life, shuddering alarmingly.

I suddenly realised that the switch was for the pump. The machine wasn't refrigerated at all. One way to save on the power bills.

"双色 (double-colour)?" Miss Whippy asked.

"Sure!" and Miss Whippy squeezed out a wet mess of chocolate and vanilla ice-cream into a cone.

She muttered to herself and tipped the ice-cream slush into a little pot, hopefully to be thrown away rather than re-used. She tried again with the same result. Young Master Whippy came over to help out while Miss Whippy opened up the machine and rummaged around inside.

Young Master Whippy tried a third time. A mess again. The cone was looking decidedly battered.

"Is vanilla ok?" Young Master Whippy asked with a sigh.

"Sure!" and Young Master Whippy poured out a column of ice-cream at least twice the height of the cone itself. Fourth time lucky! I wondered how much money they were losing on this one transaction.

How was the ice-cream? It tasted terrible. A sweet, synthetic concoction that lacked any discernible dairy creaminess at all. In short not much different to the real deal, and I ate the whole thing anyway.