This blog is about Ausfood and not specifically about the following

  • This blog is not about: anitbiotics, compost, dental caries,farmgate prices, genetically modified food, humane killing methods,
  • lactose intolerance
  • xenophobia

Friday, 25 January 2013

Ice-cream, you-scream, we-all-scream


Earlier this morning I was not quite screaming but very close to it. This screaming near-miss came about when I discovered I had been sold a ticket at Melbourne’s Southern Cross station for a bus service not operating in Rutherglen though the school holidays. As a result I was left to amuse myself for another day in lovely downtown Rutherglen. I threw myself on the kindness of strangers and spent most of the day in the cool of the library, only venturing out a couple of times into the blistering heat.

It’s an ill wind that doesn’t blow some good somewhere. My extended stay allowed me to sample the pies for which this town is well-known, to drink some more of the best coffee in town and to carry out some serious taste and labelling research on Gundowring ice-cream.

Back at the tourist information centre in the afternoon I buy a small cardboard cup of the flavour of the day – Toasted Honey and Walnut ice-cream. I look at that wording and decide I would alter the words to read Toasted Walnut and Honey; maybe I’m being even more pedantic than usual today , as a spin–off from the bus debacle, but the idea of toasted honey seems rather odd. I toss around possibilities such as clever marketing, the actual process of toasting honey and walnuts, either separately or together, while I walk outside to sit at an outdoor table.


  Sitting at a table, under the shade of an enormous old peppercorn tree, I peel off the lid. This ice-cream is made in the Kiewa Valley in north-eastern Victoria, using a combination of farm fresh milk, cream, sucrose, walnuts, stringy bark honey, skim milk powder, wheat glucose, egg yolk, natural stabiliser 412, 415,410,407.




  All those numbers. What can they mean? They will be there for a very good reason, from the maker’s point of view, but are they (apart from the natural stabiliser 412) natural or chemical and where is their country of origin? There’s another item to add to the to-do list: investigate the numbers game, or maybe if a number appears on the ingredient part of the label simply place the product in the too-hard basket.




I’m not big fan of ice-cream at the best of times but I was keen to try this local product. I’ve tried it now and for me it lacks the wow factor. It is expensive, and while prospective buyers might be expected to place quality above price, for me in this case, the price is too high.



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