We’ve made this flavor called Philly Shell a few times already and the last time something clicked in my head. It reminded me of Cool Whip and immediately of spending time at my grandparent’s old farmhouse in Manorville, Long Island. Almost every night my grandmother served strawberries with Cool Whip or whipped cream.

My grandmother was a unique person in my eyes especially in hindsight. As a kid I loved her even though I had a strange relationship with her. She was unique not because she was some great cook or a warm person like most people say about their own. My grandmother, Mary, was definitely not a good savory cook. And I believe that’s partially because she had a serious sweet tooth. A dessert before dinner and a dessert after dinner type of sweet tooth. Pies, ice cream, muffins… you name it and she ate it. For a kid like me that was awesome. There was nothing better than wandering around the woods and coming back to some blueberry pie made from the massive blueberry bush along the barn.

I like to think I inherit a lot of different things from my grandparents. From my American grandfather a partial Stoicism, from my Filipino grandfather a strong will, from my Filipino grandmother a sense of Aristocracy, and from grandma in Long Island a fondness for the Celtic and a sense of “fuck it.” All these traits don’t necessarily fit in with each other, but that is fine. Life is messy and I enjoy that. I like feeling that part of them is in me even if in a chaotic way. I love all my grandparents and carrying a piece of them around with me is priceless.

Grandma in Long Island was of the Donovans and Dittmeiers and supposedly of some long lost Dutch ancestors. So we are of Irish Protestant and Bavarian Catholic stock. Perhaps that makes for a good mix since my time spent with her was always enjoyable. We didn’t talk much, but there was an understanding. Or rather she understood the kind of person I was. She wasn’t an unhinged person, but she said what she thought. We would take walks along the country road to the hot dog truck off the Sunrise Highway. You have no idea how great it is to walk in the warm summer sun to get a hotdog and ice cream bar. She was one of the first persons to let me do whatever I wanted. As a child I was considered aloof. Society didn’t appeal to me even at 8 years old. Really I just wanted to either hang out with friends or wander the woods picking up rocks and watching animals. The woods were alive to me. Society was controlled and unnatural.

Towards the end of her life I got to see more sides of her that I hadn’t seen as a little kid. And as I’ve gotten older I appreciate her personality more and more especially considering society today. She lived during a time when women couldn’t do much. She didn’t even have her own bank account. But she was her own spirit, and people couldn’t understand that because they follow the path of society. Some people succumb to the pressure and lose themselves. My grandmother in my eyes was always struggling. And so she was considered “mad.” To me society is the one that is mad. It crushes creativity into something sellable, it sucks the life out of nature to make dead things, and it pushes us until we are domesticated like farm animals. She’s the core inside me that struggles even to the point of appearing weird.

And so that’s what I try to do. I’m reaching to do something fun and free. We make gelato to do something for ourselves and for the people we care about which is you all. If our gelato seems good it’s because of you and not just our efforts. It’s a dance and we are in it together. Luckily, through her I inherit a sense of abandon to do these things. And I inherit a crazy sweet tooth. I’m not just trained to make gelato but it’s in my blood to have an edge. So this week keep an eye out for Mary Saneski’s Summer Dessert: Philly Shell with candied strawberries. She would eat a whole batch if she were still around today.

Alex