I'm still on my slight detour off Pennsylvania Route 73 in Berks County (the same 73 that crosses the Tacony-Palmyra Bridge and becomes New Jersey Route 73) to visit the Kutztown Folk Festival (through July 8 at the Kutztown fairgrounds). As any fair-goer knows, the real purpose of a festival is good eating. And at a Pennsylvania Dutch festival, you can count on the chicken pot pie, corn fritters, funnel cakes, shoo-fly pie, strawberry shortcake, and apple dumplings. But my guilty pleasure would be ice cream (remember the exception to the "Don't eat anything that's served out a window" Road Trip Rule?). So I end up in front of the "4th Day Homemade Ice Cream" counter, where a wooden display stand is filled with cups of sundaes looking just-scooped.
Wondering if they're the plastic replica food you see at sushi bars, noodle shops or even trendier izakayas, I ask seventeen year-old Kristy Angstadt (although her name tag says "Roberta Lee") who directs me to owner Laurie Davis (name tag "Sassy') of Valdosta, Georgia. "Oh, it's real alright," she tells me. "Real mashed potatoes."
At first Davis used Crisco, but while the shortening lasted longer than a scoop of real ice cream in the summer heat, she hit on the old food photographer/food stylist's trick. She mixes up a bowl of instant mashed every morning, and dribbles each sample scoop with REAL carmel, hot fudge, strawberries and peaches.
But where did the name come from I ask. "Well, Christ rose after three days. The fourth day..." He ate ice cream! I interrupt. "No," Davis continued, "the fourth day is the rest of our lives to serve him. We plant the seeds."
So she and husband Alan visit fairs and festivals in the northeast, on a sort of "Ice Cream Ministry." They hire a crew of local young ladies at each stop to pedal the bicycle-powered ice cream maker and scoop the vanilla (one flavor only) into cups or waffle cones.
