I Can't Do What Now??

The surest way to get make something irresistible is of course to prohibit it. Its starts early. I vividly remember reading forbidden books after covering them in newspaper so their titillating covers would be hidden from my mother, or renting a questionable movie and watching it late at night with my friends.

As you grow older there are few things that are actually forbidden and the few things that are forbidden... well they also fall under the "illegal - you will end up in jail" category. The secret thrills are lost and as an adult we are able to make decisions about what is right or not. That second serving of ice cream is not fun anymore without my mother denying it to me... well not as much fun and that risqué book has lost its charm. I can stay up late, go out late, eat outside of meal times, eat entire meals that consist only of ice cream and yet without them being denied to me few of these hold any fascination. It is human tendency of course to want anything that cannot be had.

It is no wonder that the Mother of all prohibition - the prohibition of alcohol has always been such a stupendous failure. On a recent visit to a vineyard we were told this great prohibition story that I just have to put down.

This winery is a pre-prohibition era winery in upstate New York. When prohibition hit United States, all the fledgling wineries in New York state that were already struggling with being in the cold climate belt not conducive to wine production, capsized. One vineyard however survived. The Taylor Company survived by selling large jugs of grape juice. Why would there be such a booming market for grape juice when all the folks starved of alcohol were guzzling cough syrup or perfume or whatever corresponding fix they could cobble together at that time? It turns out that it was not the health benefits that the grape juice offered that won the Taylor Company so many loyal customers. The Taylor company sold these jugs with "warning labels" on the back that explained that IF you added such and such amount of yeast and let it sit for such and such time and so on the grape juice would produce wine. Though I am sure these warning labels were put on the jugs with the honorable intentions of preventing any misuse of their product (NOT!!!!), the evil folks who lived in New York at that time being no different from the folks in New York now, treated these jugs as a make-at-home wine kit. It was this moral lapse on the part of the general populace that tided the Taylor Company through the prohibition era. It is also human tendency, it seems to make money providing that we want but should not have. Hilarious I thought - fine tale about prohibition, the human spirit and well the spirits...:))

Recipe -

Mango Ice Cream . This recipe results in the most delicious mango ice cream. The flip side of course is that it uses Cool Whip, a product I would normally not touch with a ten foot poll. But since I do not have a ice cream maker and this was delicious, I succumbed..