Fortune Cookie Day was celebrated after a sushi dinner. I thought I was sneaking something in, mixing cultures, but it turns out that the fortune cookie (the cookie part of it) may have its roots in Japanese sweets and not Chinese. So it was not that sneaky. Later I was told that I should add “except in bed” at the end of my fortune instead of “in bed”. I read my fortune again:

and said that would be too depressing. So I ate another: “valuable information will be supplied by a child”. Ok - that works with “except in bed”. I think I bought a strange batch of fortune cookies.

You can’t celebrate all food days, especially in the summer when most are about cake and ice cream, so I decided to honor the lollipop in a drawing:

From Wikipedia (where everything is from and will be from from here on):

The term probably derived from the term “lolly” (tongue) and “pop” (slap). The first references to the lollipop in its modern context date to the 1920s.

I think I may have never had a for-real lollipop. Only suckers and Chupa Chups. Small things that you suck on and don’t really lick (or pop / slap). I remember my sister had a giant lollipop that I coveted and she never ate it and that pained me. It just sat on her dresser and taunted me. (Sorry Sarah, but it’s true. Do you remember that lollipop? It was blue, yellow, red, and white.)

Moving on (I’m starting to realize the stress of blogging about things related to specific days…none of this will matter tomorrow because it doesn’t even matter that much now so I must get it out before bed but getting oh so sleepy…) …

The big excitement was National Ice Cream Soda Day, or floats, or as they call them in Australia and New Zealand - spiders (can someone with connections verify that because it’s a bit weird - how and why a spider?) We made two kinds: root beer floats and ginger ale floats (also known as Boston coolers). I enjoyed mine (root beer) immensely but it brought back memories of 7up floats (Snow Whites) which I think I might like more.

Making our floats, Gregor (from Scotland) told me that they pour pop first, and then add ice cream instead of the way we’ve always made them at home (ice cream and then pop). I thought that was backwards so we gave the two methods a try. On the right, ice cream and then pop, on the left, pop, then ice cream:

Ice cream and then pop won (so I declare). Even though the pop-ice cream float has a nice, aesthetically pleasing layering of pop-foam-ice cream, it was dangerous getting the ice cream in (some spill over) and unless you are good at measuring the proper amount of pop, you are not guaranteed to get your full two scoops of ice cream.

I think that’s it. Ice cream makes me really really sleepy so after a great weekend, I’m ready to pass out - g’night.