Ice Cream

QUICKLY BECOMING A neighborhood gathering place, Mr. Teddy's Dairy Delights in Woodbine offers some of the best soft-serve frozen custard around.With 11 flavors offered daily, not to mention sundaes, banana splits, floats, milkshakes, frozen yogurt and many other specialties, word has spread that Mr. Teddy's is the place to head on warm summer days.Most evenings, the umbrella-topped picnic tables are full, and business at the pink and white ice-cream trailer is brisk. Ball teams, swimming parties and neighborhood children line up at the screened windows and place their orders with Mr. Teddy himself.

You can fiddle with the rock salt. You can skimp on the sugar. But never, ever dally with the --er.That is a lesson I learned the other day when I made ice cream at home. The --er is the part of the ice-cream maker that is suspended in the middle of the canister of sweetened cream.The dasher's mission is to make sure all the liquid mix changes into frozen cream. It does this by scraping the freezing ice-cream mix from the canister walls and pushing it toward the center. This action, in turn, pushes the pieces of unfrozen mix to where the cold is, the canister walls.

LAS VEGAS --- Cold Stone Creamery, which bills itself as the Starbucks of ice cream parlors, plans to open 35 to 40 ice cream shops in Maryland over the next three years as part of an East Coast expansion, the company said yesterday. The Scottsdale, Ariz.-based franchise operator is to open its first Maryland store in Waugh Chapel in Crofton in October, followed by a second along the road encircling Arundel Mills the day after Thanksgiving. Other sites, to be operating by early next year, are Hunt Valley Mall, Frederick and Gaithersburg, area developer Jim McManus said during the International Council of Shopping Centers convention here.

Few summer pleasures compare to savoring just-made ice cream. Whether it's fine American ice cream, French glace or Italian gelato, the basic mixture is the same. It's a cooked sweet custard of milk or cream and egg yolks called creme anglaise or English cream, which is spiked with various flavorings. To make it, you need an ice-cream machine that stirs the custard as it freezes. This inhibits the formation of ice crystals that can mar silky smoothness. Equally important is patience.

If you were to ask Bryan Soronson, as I did recently, "How's Baltimore doing?" he would respond not by citing per-capita income or population characteristics. Instead, he would talk about how the metropolis handles the crucial cream-to-fuit ratio in its frozen desserts. Soronson, an administrator of the department of neurology at the University of Maryland Medical Center in downtown Baltimore, is an ice-cream aficionado. For him, the quality of life in a community is directly liked to the quality of its home-made frozen desserts.

In the years before air conditioning could be taken for granted, ice cream was not just a tasty treat. In the sultry South, where I grew up, it was a cold tasty treat, and thus could be classified as more a necessity than a luxury. Small towns in Alabama weren't blessed with many ice-cream trucks - at least our street wasn't. But my brothers and I, along with an abundance of nearby cousins, had something even better: a hand-cranked ice-cream maker and Aunt Billie, who happily chaired the family ice-cream committee.

Americans seem collectively primed to scream for ice cream every summer. The loudest Tarzan-thumps often come from fans who take their licks in the face of - or as a reward for - 10-mile runs and no-carb diets. Ice cream continues to be as popular as it was 300 years ago, when Gov. William Bladen of Maryland delighted his guests by offering them ice cream in Annapolis, more than a century before first lady Dolley Madison would serve it in the White House in 1812. Today, it is a year-round staple in most freezers, but its biggest season is summer, when it goes hand in hand with vacations and leisurely weekends.

Pasta class -- A cooking demonstration highlighting summer pasta dishes will include wine and food tastings at 6 p.m. June 22 at Donna's of Columbia, 5850 Waterloo Road. $40. There is a 48-hour cancellation policy. Reservations are required; call 410-659-5248, ext. 112 or visit donnas.com. Ice Cream 101 --Learn how to make different types of ice cream at Williams-Sonoma stores on June 24. At 10 a.m. in Cross Keys, 70 Village Square, and 11 a.m. in Annapolis, 1705 Annapolis Mall. Free. For more information, visit Williams-Sonoma stores.

Free contemporary country concert In celebration of the 29th anniversary of the Montpelier Summer Concert Series, the South Laurel Recreation Council will present a concert of contemporary country music by Jay D. Henley, herdsman, cattle farrier and resident of Woodbine, and his Stone Broke Band at 7:30 p.m. Friday. The free concert will be held on the Montpelier Mansion Grounds, 9652 Muirkirk Road at Route 197, in south Laurel. Take a picnic and a blanket or chair. Free public and handicapped parking is available near the Montpelier Drive and Muirkirk Road entrances, off Route 197. In case of inclement weather: 301-953-7882 after 5 p.m. on the day of the concert.

WASHINGTON -- Not to be "ungenerous or self-centered," said White House counselor Ed Gillespie, but he thinks some people overestimate Karl Rove's importance. After all, Gillespie pointed out, in the 2004 presidential campaign he himself headed the Republican National Committee, the heart of the party's operations. And he only talked to Rove "from time to time" Another White House official, asked what it would mean to lose the legendary strategist, whose departure was announced Monday, recalled that Rove had started the staff's "ice cream Fridays."

Marjorie L. "Margie" Nagle, whose family's renowned handmade ice cream kept devotees coming to their Carroll County general store for more than 80 years, died Sunday of congestive heart failure at her Snydersburg home. She was 92. Marjorie Lavinia Simmons was born on her parents' Snydersburg Road farm, and was 8 years old when she moved into a house and general store her parents built across from the farm and opened as Simmons General Store. Mrs. Nagle, a graduate of Carroll County public schools, began working in the general store with her parents when she was a child.

Age: 19 Years on the job: 3 Salary: $7.75 per hour plus tips How he got started: : Jerome Henry decided to take a job at the Cold Stone Creamery while still attending Patterson High School. His older brother worked there and enjoyed it, so he thought he would give it a try. Once he graduated, the job also allowed him the flexibility to attend a massage therapist program at the Medix School in Towson. Henry recently completed the nine-month program and is preparing to take his certification exam later this year.

My grandmother enforced a no-oven policy during the hottest part of the summer. Her adamant don't-heat-up-the-kitchen stance caused some interesting detours when a family birthday fell during the cake-baking blackout period. The simple answer was to phone Fiske's, the wonderful Park Avenue-Bolton Hill confectioner, and order a cake and ice cream, which was delivered in a snappy-looking dark blue truck with gold lettering. The ice cream came boxed and wrapped in dry ice that, when placed in a bucket of water, made great spooky clouds.

Bobby and Pam Prigel are moving forward with construction of a creamery on their Long Green Valley property, where they will sell organic dairy products made from milk produced by their herd at Bellevale Farms. A $250,000 low-interest loan from Baltimore County, announced Tuesday, will help them complete and equip a 10,000-square-foot pole barn on Long Green Road. "This puts the finishing touches on this project," Bobby Prigel told a gathering of officials and friends at the farm, promising to invite them back next spring for ice cream.

There's nothing wrong with vanilla ice cream or a vanilla-and-chocolate frozen-yogurt cone. But sometimes you just want something different, something more. Some shops in the Baltimore area have taken that idea to a whole new level, offering frozen treats in wacky flavors or spicing things up, sometimes literally, with out-there toppings. Some of the craziest cold concoctions: Dominion's vegetable ice cream, which comes in spinach, carrot, tomato, sweet potato and jalapeno; Mr. Yogato's peach yogurt with extra-virgin olive oil and balsamic vinaigrette; Pitango Gelato's spicy chocolate, with crushed red chili peppers; Moxley's Old Bay ice cream, for that extra little kick; and Sylvan Beach's margarita ice cream, complete with salt and lime.

The oddest question one volunteer at Artscape heard repeatedly was, "Where's the art?" Maybe it was his location in the Family Park, where most of the art was hands-on and fledgling. Still, Josh Singer told visitors, "Art is everywhere." For three days in July, Baltimore turns its Mount Royal neighborhood into Artscape, the country's largest free celebration of the arts. The event has expanded over its 28-year run, still drawing newcomers and those who make it a tradition. Estimates this year could exceed 500,000 or more, given the cooperative temperatures and balmy breezes, Artscape organizers said.

Fiat closes deal to take bulk of Chrysler's assets Italy's Fiat is the new owner of most of Chrysler's assets, closing a deal Wednesday that saves the troubled U.S. automaker from liquidation and places a new company in the hands of Fiat's CEO. The deal creates a leaner company known as Chrysler Group LLC, which is not in bankruptcy protection and is free of billions of debt, 789 underperforming dealerships and burdensome labor costs that hobbled the...

Which came first, the berry or the shortcake? No matter; they are made for each other. Berry and shortcake season is just beginning, and for several months, you will have your choice of strawberries, raspberries, blueberries and blackberries picked at the peak of ripeness and dripping with sweet juice just waiting to be heaped on freshly baked shortcakes. Start your ovens, put the cream in the bowl and get ready for the feast. Biscuits are the basic shortcake, but enriching biscuits and making shortcakes that take advantage of interesting combinations - orange with strawberries, chocolate with raspberries, and cinnamon with blueberries - make every shortcake worthy of its berry.

Metal machines gleam as workers wearing earplugs, goggles and uniforms bustle here and there inside a factory in Laurel. Some don white lab coats and check their work with graduated cylinders and precision scales. By all appearances, they could be making spaceships or airplanes. But the sweet smell of warm chocolate offers a hint at the product being made in this factory. They're making ice cream. And at Dreyer's Grand Ice Cream, they are making more ice cream than ever at the 705,000-square-foot facility on Whiskey Bottom Road.

Summer's not officially over when Labor Day hits. But it may as well be. More than winter, more than autumn, more than spring, summer is a state of mind, existing not so much because of the calendar, not so much because of the temperature, but because we close our eyes, exhale and let it happen. After Labor Day, as we become about less vacation and more school, more work, more wearing shoes, summer fades. It evaporates like condensation on a glass of lemonade. But before it's gone for another year, there's one weekend left - a long one. Make it good.