Meat Ice creams

[donnad.livejournal.com]

There has been a lot of discussion going on over at this post. I was going to respond over there but figured it would just get lost in the shuffle.

I would like to try to clarify what I believe is Anns's complaint about meat ice creams. Ann correct me if I am wrong here.

Disclaimer: I am an omnivore, I eat meat. I do not like chicken liver at all therefore the thought of a chicken liver ice cream is a major squick for me. I have allergies to many other foods, many of them were made into ice creams this year, I actually had a run-in (so to speak) with one of those foods this year(mango if anyone is curious.)
I do not keep kosher.

So here is my take on this.

Say you have a table with several buckets of ice cream and one scoop and a bucket of rinse water.
First person, takes a scoop of the chicken liver ice cream, puts the scoop in the water, the water is now contaminated with chicken liver ice cream melt. Next person takes the scoop and scoops into the mango ice cream and puts the scoop back in the water. Mango ice cream is now contaminated with chicken liver water. Water is now contaminated with chicken liver and mango. Next one comes along, scoops into the chocolate ice cream, scoop goes back in the water, chocolate ice cream is now contaminated with the chicken liver and the mango. Water is now contaminated with chicken liver, mango and chocolate.

I come along, and I want vanilla. I take the scoop and proceed to contaminate the vanilla with chicken liver, mango and chocolate. Well, I am personally allergic to mango. I actually can't have the vanilla I want without having to deal with the contamination from the water of chicken liver, chocolate and mango melt. Thus I can't even have vanilla unless I use my own personal scoop, which BTW would be contaminated by anything else I may have dipped into prior to coming to the vanilla, thus contaminating the vaniila for someone else.

I think this is the issue at hand. How do we deal with stopping the cross contamination of dairy to non-dairy and meat to dairy/non-dairy?

Personally I think the meat ice creams are an interesting experiment and I don't want to discourage experimentation but... The situation could be easily remedied by a separation of them to a small table by themselves with their own scoops.

I think a separation of flavors based on type is a really a good idea for future Baitcons. The sorbets get a table, non-dairy/soy or coconut based on one table, the *hot* ice creams (like habanero) on another, the regular ice creams on one, and the meat on yet another. It would help to avoid cross contamination of dairy into meat, dairy into soy and other non-dairy flavors.



Now as for the other issue she raised. I too think that the person walking around with the torn t-shirt barely covering his privates was out of place, especially with so many young kids around. Call me a prude, but IMO, in the house area one should be a bit more modest. If it had been a speedo swim suit, it would have been fine. Or down at the stream, I wouldn't have blinked twice. But in the main common areas, where anyone could have driven in off the street he should have had a bit more modesty. I can only imagine what the owners of the property would have said/done had they decided to visit our little gathering and seen him.

Comments

[mycroft.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's possible to solve this "problem" for real. People will always get impatient and move scoops around, even if there is no common scoop bucket. Separating by "type" doesn't work either, because people may be sensitive to one fruit or another, even at the sorbet table.

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

I guess it gets back to numbers of people and levels of sensitivity. Deathly allergic merits more caring than "if I eat much of [foo] it makes me sick," and 20 people caring about whether milk gets into the sorbet merits more caring than one person being squicked by leechees.

Hm.
I suppose as far as the sensitivity to certain fruits goes we could maybe have a number of red scoops that could be tied to specific ices, to signify "someone's sensitive to this stuff; please don't get it onto the other things on the table."...

:shrug:

[jbsegal.livejournal.com]

Hm... Leech Ice Cream...

(I'm guessing that's why it's usually transliterated "lychee". :)

[perspicuity.livejournal.com]

i just discovered "litchi wine" (spelled that way on the bottle). did not buy it, but intriguing.

#

[mycroft.livejournal.com]

There are a lot of issues here. E.g., the buckets aren't even necessarily washed with soap between freezing each batch (sometimes they're just rinsed thoroughly) -- and even if they were, we couldn't guarantee they're clean enough for people with "severe" allergies. It's possible to do this all very precisely, but it will make the process slow and very labor intensive, any my guess is that it simply won't get done. The nature of the event will change, and for the sake of a small handful of people, most of whom merely have mental hangups, and not actual allergies.

I think I would summarize it something like this: "This is not an allergy friendly operation. If you have allergies, please don't partake. If you have hangups about what you can eat and can't deal, please don't partake. If you think a particular flavor is the most disgusting thing you've ever heard of, DON'T TASTE IT. Use your brain. If we have to take you to the hospital anyway, we'll do it, but we'll be awfully annoyed about your inattention to your own medical issues. Please do not expect the tastes and whims of 150 other people to cater to you -- that's egocentric, and it simply won't happen."