X Marks the Spot

If there is a more felicitous summer tradition than going out for ice cream, I'm sure I don't know what it is - especially when the purveyor in question is an establishment as venerable as our local drive-in, The Spot. The Spot has been dispensing pierogies, funnel cake, hot dogs, cones, and sundaes to grateful locals since Dinosaur Times. Food is served from its humble window at the corner of a busy semi-rural intersection and eaten under a tatty awning festooned with jauntily-colored twinkly lights and cheerily-buzzing insect zappers. The only seating is a few rickety picnic tables outside.

The Spot is frighteningly wholesome. It is haunted by kids who've just come out of the pool, all pruney in their swimsuits as they drip-dry with beach towels and banana splits. Little leaguers come for their post-game analysis and, depending on the circumstances, celebratory or consolatory treat. Older folks come by for an early-evening snack - young couples come on dates. Bikers appear sometimes, choking the tiny parking lot with their hogs (somehow, even the fiercest tattooed rider looks rather sweet when chowing down on a Rocky Road sundae) and frogmen (amongst whose numbers we sometimes include ourselves) repair there after a long day of scuba-diving at the quarry just up the road.

It's a place old friends often ask to visit when they return to the Valley after a long absence and we love it dearly.

Of course, such riches can only be experienced between Memorial Day and Labor Day (give or take), which adds to the rarity of the experience. Tonight was our inaugural visit of the season.

The trip was an unplanned one, as they almost always are. I had earlier fetched the Kid Squid from school so I could take him to his flying lesson (he cultivates his eccentricities in a way that makes his parents proud and aims to be able to pilot a plane before he can drive a car). Junior Birdman was grounded, however, due to the strange tornado-like climactic conditions we have been experiencing lately and, since the airport is near Sir's place of work, we decided to drop by. Before you could say 'I'd like an extra cherry, please' we had liberated him from his Friday afternoon responsibilities and were trooping down the highway for a bowl of the cold stuff.

Now, The Spot doesn't do ice cream as such. It's not that kind of place (for ice cream, we have to drive further into town to The Dairy Store, which is an august establishment in its own right but in an entirely different league). No, The Spot does soft-serve only, two flavours: vanilla and chocolate. What more do you need, really? Not much, especially when it's doused with blueberry sauce, hot fudge, peanuts, and whipped topping from a can.

My go-to favorite is a vanilla and hot caramel (sorry, karmel) sundae. It's divine - sticky and gooey but not too sweet. The karmel atop the snowy swirl is warm and runny, but by the time you get to the bottom of your styrofoam cup it's become firm and pliable, like thick thick toffee.

Since our expedition this evening was of the spur-of-the-moment variety, I was unable to investigate the ingredients in soft-serve before I committed myself to a luscious bowlful. I had to admit I had no idea what were the constituent parts of the substance into which I was about to plunge my plastic spoon. I mean, there's a reason they don't call it ice cream, right? Was it possible there was gluten lurking in that chilly curlicue of marshmallowy delight? I decided it was unlikely but, the sun's glare being too challenging for the screen of my Smartyphone, the real research had to wait until I'd finished my decadent dessert and returned home to the family computer.

Subsequent investigation revealed that, although the ingredients in my karmel sundae were truly bloodcurdling, they at least did not count gluten amongst their number. Astonishingly, the top two were good old fashioned milk and sugar. The roster that followed was less reassuring: corn syrup (to enhance texture by combating crystallization; it contributes to volume, too); whey (oops - can't pretend there's no lactose in there!); mono and diglycerides (emulsifiers, as we are all well aware); artificial flavors; guar gum (yes, yes, for viscosity - something with which we glutenless-baking experimenters are unhappily familiar); calcium sulfate (a desiccant and coagulant); cellulose (for thickening); polysorbates 65 and 80 (more emulsifiers); carrageenan (for thickening and gelling); and magnesium hydroxide (not sure why that's in there, actually: presumably not for its laxative effects).

What was in my karmel, goodness-only-knows.

Never mind. It's gluten-free!