National Ice Cream Day is July 19th! - New American Holiday

July 19th is National Ice Cream Day! Ronald Reagan designated the third Sunday in July to be National Ice Cream Day and encouraged Americans to honor this new American holiday by consuming copious quantities of ice cream. Whether or not dairy industry lobbyists had a hand in crafting this new American holiday is either an irrelevant issue or an example of genius. Ice cream has been a favorite American food since revolutionary times. George Washington stored blocks of winter's ice to make summer's ice cream. And today over 90% of all U.S. households eat ice cream fashioned into cones, bowls, parfait glasses, floats and even on sticks. Ice cream is one of the few desserts made for strolling in the park on a summer's night.
Vanilla remains the most favorite ice cream flavor, with chocolate a distant second. Wisconsinites favor blue moon ice cream. Exactly what that flavor is defies description, but it's good! Living in America's Dairyland makes Wisconsinites choosy about ice cream. We love extra-creamy, super-duper rich and delicious ice cream, (read in high-fat content). Walk around the University of Wisconsin - Madison campus during the summer and you're sure to see people happily enjoying Babcock Hall ice cream. Babcock Dairy is part of UW-Madison and creates the latest-greatest in ice cream innovations of taste. A rival to UW's Babcock Hall ice cream is Madison's Chocolate Shoppe ice cream. This ice cream too is extra-creamy and creative in flavors. Black licorice, dark chocolate, and Mackinac Island fudge are served up beside America's traditional favorites. So what's your favorite flavor? I bet you have one. I do, it just changes day to day. And this Sunday, on National Ice Cream Day, you can be sure I'll be showing my patriotism with a dish of ice cream made in Wisconsin.