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Ice Cream, Nice Cream, They're All Screaming For Ice Cream

I could no more resist a story about rising ice cream sales that leads with the line "the Benito Belly Buster is back" than I can resist the guilty pleasure itself. Stephen Gandel reports that national ice cream sales were up 20% in May over 2009, leading to what some might call irresponsible exuberance on the part of the Royal Scoop Homemade Ice Cream shop in Benito Spring, Fla. It has revived its $34.99 ice cream platter containing 15 scoops, six toppings, three bananas and a mound of whip cream after a five-year hiatus.

"It doesn't seem like people are holding back on the culinary treats as a result of economic challenges," says owner Dave Zimmermann.

Some members of the National Ice Cream Retailers Association say that their sales are up 25% from a year ago; Unilever's first-quarter ice cream and beverage sales rose 7.4%; Packaged Goods estimates ice cream sales in supermarkets and scoop shops rose 1.1% last year to $14.5 billion. Wildly divergent figures, yes, but all trending toward a bigger portion.

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Bret Thorn reports in Nation's Restaurant News that some restaurants have reinvented the ice pop -- "cooling down their customers and also feeding them a dose of nostalgia." But these aren't anything like the Popsicles you bought after a sweaty day on the sandlot.

New York's Rickshaw Dumpling Bar, for example, has $2 "nice-icles" in a plastic tube that come in calamansi, mango lassi and Thai coffee flavors. The pool cafe at the Mandarin Oriental in Las Vegas offers free ice pops in flavors such as lemon-thyme, raspberry tea-passion fruit, and watermelon-lemon grass. Others are infusing alcohol. They're called "booze-sicles" at Chicago's Prairie Gras Café.

The Cincinnati Enquirer's Laura Braverman, meanwhile, reports that the Queen City's own Graeter's ice cream is going national thanks to a state-of-the-art $11 million plant it just opened. Take it from me, who has a big sister who long ago learned the way into a little boy's heart, there's nothing like getting a crate of Graeter's delivered to your door.

Braverman writes that the new facility will let the fourth generation of Graeter's produce more than four times the amount of ice cream than its old plant churned out -- enough to supply Kroger stores throughout the U.S. and, possibly, other supermarket chains. "We knew we had to change to make it to a fifth generation," says president and CEO Rich Graeter.

This might be an appropriate place to mention Daily Dog's item reporting that Michelle Obama has enlisted Major League Baseball and its players' association for a new public service advertising campaign to promote her program to eliminate childhood obesity. There will be 30 television and 30 radio spots, customized for each team.

Read the whole story at Time, Nation's Restaurant News, Cincinnati Enquirer, Bulldog Reporter's Daily Dog »

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