Tasting Ice Creams
The child in me always responds with excitement whenever I hear the ice cream vans chimes. As a child. great memories of running to the van at the bottom of the road and coming back with a cider lolly or on flush days an Oyster cone.
We were both raised in the 1970s when ‘home’ ice cream came in cardboard rectangular blocks and the most exotic version of which was possibly either Raspberry Ripple or Neapolitan. In the 1980s we started to get very exotic ice cream most famously Vienetta which changed the game. Vienetta was birthday or Christmas kind of treat. The portions were cut with atomic accuracy to give each person the same quantity. The rule in our house was simple – the one person did the cutting, the other got first pick.
Every now and again, often at the end of a stressful day or week Alice and I treat ourselves to a fancy ice cream. For us still a fancy ice cream is a Ben and Jerry’s or a Hagen Daz – we usually wait to see what is on offer. My dear wife and I have completely different tastes – hers in the chocolate area and mine more caramel or strawberry. On holiday if I find myself at a nice Gelato emporium I do also like a pistachio.
My tastes are somewhat static – whilst I very often look at the other exciting flavours, I do tend to revert to the same strawberry based ice cream. This is partly because the blooming stuff is so expensive and indeed so calorific, that I’m not going to waste £5 on something I don’t end up really liking. I saw a friend of mine this week posting that she had enjoyed a liquorice and lemon ice cream. Now I’m curious but will still go for what I like next time
I’m much the same having a curry – I make the pretence of looking at the menu each time but then being a good South African enamoured of meat in all its forms, I always go for a Tandoori Mixed Grill: large piece of chicken, chicken tikka, lamb tikka and a kebab.
What I need really is what some extremely posh restaurants offer, namely a tasting menu. These vary between five and ten courses with a small amount of each course. They are sometimes themed and allow you to try lots of things – if you don’t like something then no harm done and if you do then maybe next time you can order a whole main course of just that.
Here at St Christopher’s we are using our occasional Respond service to do something a little bit like a tasting menu for a new sermon series that we will shortly be beginning. From Guy’s recent research work listening to people in church and also people in our community some of whom don’t come to church, we saw a number themes emerge and so when our series starts next week on Sunday 7th we will for the next 9 weeks be looking at each theme in turn – getting God’s best version of it. And so tomorrow what I wanted to do was, if you like, a starter menu of what is to come over the next two months, a chance to get your spiritual taste buds salivating just a bit and get your little grey cells working. Our 5th Sunday Respond service was designed to give us space to respond to something we saw God doing in our community and Guy’s excellent report is exactly the type of thing we should be responding to. The fit with Trinity Sunday which we also celebrate tomorrow is, as we will see, a good one too!
So come along for a taster and begin to get inspired for what is to come. I would offer ice creams but I can be reasonably sure the British summer will be over by Sunday…
And don’t forget our Love your Church time today (Saturday) between 10.00am and 2.00pm in the church – a chance to clean and have some fun!
Look forward to seeing you
Come spiritually hungry….
Peace and Blessings
Andy
Brislington Community News 