hi. my name is jen.
and i'm an ice cream sandwich-a-holic.
seriously. i can't be left unsupervised with them. even the questionable-ingredient-list-rectangular ones from the gas station mini-marts (see exhibit a). they are delicious. and evil. and awesome. and yes, i'll unapologetically plow through an entire box of those rectangular crack-like confections without a second thought. i love them.
a few years ago i realized i was starting to obsess over them a bit differently than i had previously. and i was getting a little indignant. which was odd. basically i was puzzled that cupcakes were a thing, but ice cream sandwiches weren't.
why the heck not?
you see, i've never been a lover of cupcakes. don't get me wrong. cupcakes are good. i'll eat them. absolutely. but i almost never go intentionally IN SEARCH of cake (except maybe bakery nouveau's german chocolate cake. seriously. i'm not sure it's legal, it's that delicious). ice cream, on the other hand - get out of the way. but cake? meh.
and so with cupcakes continuing to be A THING combined, with my DEEP love of (ok, obsession with) ice cream sandwiches, and the rapidly (and perhaps seemingly unrelated) growing food truck culture in the city my brain started to go a little wonky.
and by wonky i mean that it seemed OBVIOUS to me that there should be an ice cream sandwich food truck. i mean really. why weren't there, like, 12 already?
think about it. hordes of kids can still be seen in the deep summer dashing into the house for money so they can get the so-much-more-delicious-than-the-same-popsicle-that's-in-the-freezer-in-the-kitchen ice cream from teh ice cream man. the song the trucks or vans blast is the same as it was in my childhood d to get their precious dollars as the ice cream trucks (often times oldish and sort of creepy white vans with a ga-zillion ice cream bar and popsicle stickers plastered on the outside as an odd but effective menu)
and so SQUISH was born.
while i used to be afraid, a little, of food trucks, i've come to realize that SOME OF THE BEST FOOD IN THE WORLD comes from food trucks and the sometimes sketch looking kitchen areas that exist within them. now - you add to all of that random thinking the fact that ice cream trucks still roam neighborhoods in the depths of summer. in fact my heart still leaps when i hear the sound of them coming down the street and i dash to find change in the hopes of making it outside before they disappear around the corner. and so in my brain of odd math, i started to think about how ice cream sandwiches could be the next fad, much like cupcakes. and that food trucks are like big fancy ice cream trucks. so why not mash them up? cause that would be epically awesome.
and so i started to explore the idea of ice cream sandwiches. making them. selling them. maybe someday having a food truck from which i could sell them.
granted the idea sort of sounded in my head much more like finding an old VW van, retrofitting it with outlets and ovens, cashing in my 401K, strapping my paddleboard to the roof, quitting my day-job and driving up and down the west coast making and selling contraband ice cream sandwiches out of the back of the van and hitting the beach when inventory ran out...........
yeah.... so what it really looked like was a series of small experiments that ended in enough successes to demonstrate that i could likely make a go of it if i wanted to give over my life to baking cookies and churning ice cream endlessly. which, as it turns out, i don't. probably. maybe.
but i still love ice cream. making it. eating it. and especially squishing it between cookies. or cake. or brownies. or bacon.
so squish lives on. an ongoing experiment and exploration. and this is the capture of those adventures.
a few years ago i realized i was starting to obsess over them a bit differently than i had previously. and i was getting a little indignant. which was odd. basically i was puzzled that cupcakes were a thing, but ice cream sandwiches weren't.
why the heck not?
you see, i've never been a lover of cupcakes. don't get me wrong. cupcakes are good. i'll eat them. absolutely. but i almost never go intentionally IN SEARCH of cake (except maybe bakery nouveau's german chocolate cake. seriously. i'm not sure it's legal, it's that delicious). ice cream, on the other hand - get out of the way. but cake? meh.
and so with cupcakes continuing to be A THING combined, with my DEEP love of (ok, obsession with) ice cream sandwiches, and the rapidly (and perhaps seemingly unrelated) growing food truck culture in the city my brain started to go a little wonky.
and by wonky i mean that it seemed OBVIOUS to me that there should be an ice cream sandwich food truck. i mean really. why weren't there, like, 12 already?
think about it. hordes of kids can still be seen in the deep summer dashing into the house for money so they can get the so-much-more-delicious-than-the-same-popsicle-that's-in-the-freezer-in-the-kitchen ice cream from teh ice cream man. the song the trucks or vans blast is the same as it was in my childhood d to get their precious dollars as the ice cream trucks (often times oldish and sort of creepy white vans with a ga-zillion ice cream bar and popsicle stickers plastered on the outside as an odd but effective menu)
and so SQUISH was born.
while i used to be afraid, a little, of food trucks, i've come to realize that SOME OF THE BEST FOOD IN THE WORLD comes from food trucks and the sometimes sketch looking kitchen areas that exist within them. now - you add to all of that random thinking the fact that ice cream trucks still roam neighborhoods in the depths of summer. in fact my heart still leaps when i hear the sound of them coming down the street and i dash to find change in the hopes of making it outside before they disappear around the corner. and so in my brain of odd math, i started to think about how ice cream sandwiches could be the next fad, much like cupcakes. and that food trucks are like big fancy ice cream trucks. so why not mash them up? cause that would be epically awesome.
and so i started to explore the idea of ice cream sandwiches. making them. selling them. maybe someday having a food truck from which i could sell them.
granted the idea sort of sounded in my head much more like finding an old VW van, retrofitting it with outlets and ovens, cashing in my 401K, strapping my paddleboard to the roof, quitting my day-job and driving up and down the west coast making and selling contraband ice cream sandwiches out of the back of the van and hitting the beach when inventory ran out...........
yeah.... so what it really looked like was a series of small experiments that ended in enough successes to demonstrate that i could likely make a go of it if i wanted to give over my life to baking cookies and churning ice cream endlessly. which, as it turns out, i don't. probably. maybe.
but i still love ice cream. making it. eating it. and especially squishing it between cookies. or cake. or brownies. or bacon.
so squish lives on. an ongoing experiment and exploration. and this is the capture of those adventures.