We are hosting a nearly* annual ice-cream off. Please read carefully in order to prepare well for and participate fully in the event:

1) Ice Cream

If you have an ice cream maker at your disposal, make your most beloved recipe in the largest quantity you can reasonably manage.** Multiple submissions are permitted, so feel free to enter as many varieties as you like. We will have no problem eating them, Please bring an ice cream scoop for each submission. 

The -off suffix means competition. We will have a secret ballot ***for first, second, and third places. This year there will be solid gold trophies for winners in addition to honor/the absence of shame.****

If you are not in a position to make your own ice cream, consider bringing your favorite ice cream made by someone else–be it local family-owned business or international dairy conglomerate–to ensure that there’s plenty of ice cream to go around. If you switch up the containers and pretend that you made it–well, we can’t really stop you, but the Lord probably can. (yikes.) You should bring an ice cream scoop, too, if you have one, for the same reason listed above.

Still another option would be to make/bring an ice cream topping.

2) The Eating of It

Please bring your own bowl and spoon.   We will, of course, have some on hand, but you would be sad if we ran out, and no one likes someone lurking over her/his shoulder consumed with desire for his/her spoon.

You might also bring your trusty water bottle.  Of course, we also have some vessels in which to serve you our fine New Haven tap water, but ice cream makes a person thirsty and you may prefer to cleanse the palate between flavors with your own constant summer companion at this end-of-summer event.

* Sadly, we did not get it together to host an Ice Cream-Off in 2014. (We’re not entirely sure why.) Otherwise it’s been held every summer of ECV’s existence (since 2008)–making this the eleventh (almost) annual event.

** Remarkably, two year’s ago’s winner created the top vote-getting ice cream without the use of an ice cream maker through an elaborate process of whipping and (partially?) freezing ingredients in turn. You, too, may attempt such a thing– or canvas the neighborhood in search of a machine that might save you the trouble (albeit keep you from ascending to the heights of glory that Sam came to occupy through the successful deployment of her own method).

*** If you’re a contestant and especially concerned about the integrity of the voting process, you might consider arriving on the earlier end of things so that your submission may be successfully dissociated from your person and placed on the table with the others. (At that time, we’ll ask you to make a sign with the title of your submission and a list of any ingredients that might cause trouble for anyone. We did actually have two different ice creams containing pork [in the form of candied bacon] one year.) If you’re banking on your charisma and personal advocacy to secure the prize, then you’ll want to arrive in the thick of things and make sure to tell everyone which is yours. Others may frown upon this practice.  

       As it is, arriving near the beginning of the Ice Cream-Off has its advantages for non-contestants as well: since we don’t have the staff or freezer space to prevent the melting of submissions, latecomers will be forced to deal with the inevitable meltiness of it all.

**** Hopewell said I should write this in order to motivate participation after a rather thin year for submissions last year. It is completely false.  Well, mostly false: there have been trophies in some years past.  But maybe not this year.  And almost certainly not solid gold ones. But, trophies aside, you really should make some ice cream if at all possible. We will love you (more) for it. 

***** I pretty much eschew the addition of toppings in the initial round of determining the best ICE CREAM, but subsequent visits to the ice cream table might profitably involve sauces, candy, nuts, whipped cream, etc. Liz Moore once made a salted caramel sauce that Todd would have eaten off of a shoe (you know, if there wasn’t also some in a bowl or jar nearby.)