Taste From Childhood

I have been on a quest to recapture a taste from childhood. I must've been five or six. Growing up in Hong Kong at the time, one of my favourite treats was mango ice cream. On hot nights, when I went out with my mother or grandmother, we often stopped at an ice cream shop at the bottom of a hill to get mango ice cream on a cone on the way home. With the ice cream in hand, we would climb the hill to our tenement building.

The mango ice cream was cold, smooth and delicious. It sent a fruity, creamy tingle up my nostrils. You know how Edmund in Narnia traded his siblings in for Turkish Delight (nasty stuff, btw). As a youngster, I probably would have traded my siblings in for mango ice cream.

Since The Boy was born, every time I see mango flavour offered at an ice cream parlour, I choose it. But it's been disappointing. The iced granules taste like they're been flavoured with unripe mango peel, not incorporated with the sun ripened flesh of the tropical fruit. I don't get a creamy treat. I get soft flavoured plastic that leaves a bad after taste.

Surprisingly this week, Bro tells me he's been enjoying mango ice cream, bought at the supermarket! I run to our local Loblaws and I see a PC mango sherbet. I buy it. It doesn't taste good. Bro tells me it's the one made by Tropical Treets. After dinner last night, I go in search of it, by foot, just to make my pursuit more dramatic.

In the ice cream section, I see Tropical Treets mango ice cream. I see that Hagen Daaz also makes a mango sherbet. Another company (I forget which now) makes a mango yogurt. Did mango flavour come into vogue when I wasn't looking?

I chose the Tropical Treets, this time. It is much better than the PC sherbet, but still not the ice cream of my childhood. I will have to try that Hagen Daaz sherbet next.

What to do with all the mango ice cream stacking up in the freezer? Mango smoothies for breakfast. I think The Boy will go for that.