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, Mary Saneski

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

"Camden was originally an accident, but I shall never be sorry I was left over in Camden. It has brought me blessed returns."
-Walt Whitman

What makes America great isn’t the land. It’s the stories. And there are but a handful of places that offer stories with such potency. New Jersey is one such place. It offers stories through song, acting, science, literature, poetry, and physical will. New Jersey punches beyond its size to show the limitless potential and constant renewal of America.

It’s an odd thing when you move elsewhere and come back to the state. Some other places I’ve lived have been ideological places. Let’s call it living under the golden curtain. The only ones who live free there are those who are either extremely rich or complete vagabonds. Other places can’t get over something that happened over a hundred years ago. In Jersey, there are a lot of normies but because people are used to not agreeing with everyone and still getting along we are free to be ourselves. It’s not remotely perfect here, but it’s outright Borgish elsewhere. I guess if you live through your smartphone it doesn't matter where you live, but I’m a street kid. I hang on the stoop and talk shit. You learn how to maintain your individuality within the herd.

I think of the athletes like Marvin Hagler, Jordan Burroughs, and Mike Trout. There’s musicians like Lauryn Hill, Whitney Houston, or Glenn Danzig. Where would we be without Allen Ginsberg, Joyce Kilmer, or Walt Whitman? There are so many actors like: Joe Pesci, Anne Hathaway, Danny DeVito, etc. As a kid I grew up watching the first Iraq War. Setting all the politics aside I remember watching Stormin Norman Schwartzkopf on tv. As far as I can remember he was the last hero general and while at Boys State in Trenton I got to shake his hand. The list is endless. I even made one but its too long. So for now I’ll just name off a few.

Musicians:
-Frank Sinatra
-Nancy Sinatra
-Jon Bon Jovi
-Queen Latifah
-Glenn Danzig
-That one guy… what’s his name again? Bryce?
-Frank Iero
-Redman
-Dionne Warwick
-Akon

Film:
-Michael Douglas
-Anne Hathaway
-James Gandolfini: Yo Tone!
-Jason Alexander: Can’t stand ya!
-Paul Rudd: Passaic baby!
-Zoe Saldana: Passaic baby!
-Zach Braff: the nurse guy
-Jason Biggs: the pie guy
-James Mewes
-Kevin Smith
-Daisy Fuentes
-Christopher Reeve: Superman son! Princeton raised.
-Jon Stewart
-Xander Berkeley
-Brooke Shields
-Tom Cruise
-Tate Donovan
-Bruce Willis
-Bill Bellamy
-Ed Harris
-Vera Farmiga
-Dulé Hill
-Nathan Lane
-Ray Liota
-George R R Martin
-Kelly Ripa
-Roy Scheider
-Michael B Jordan: grew up in Newark. Played one of the best “villains”

Sports:
-Shaq
-Johnny Gaudreau
-Frankie Edgar
-Bam Bam Bigelow
-James Van Riemsdyk
-Kyle Palmieri

Others:
-Steve Forbes
-Fran Lebowitz
-Aaron Burr
-Anthony Bourdain
-Chris Christie
-Dana Bash: lol
-David Copperfield
-The Jonas Brothers
-Jared Kushner
-Mark and Scott Kelly
-Buzz Aldrin
-John Brennan: former director of the CIA
-William Carlos Williams
-Dick Vitale: Passaic WHAT?!
-Abner Zwillman
-Bill Maher

Damn, it really is too many. Just go on wikipedia and read up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_from_New_Jersey

At the end of the day there are so many good places in this country, but without all these people from New Jersey throughout the years what would America be? It would still be a great place, but it wouldn’t have that punch. New Jersey is the size of a toothpick but it punches like a heavyweight. Where you at America?

I’ll leave this here for a laugh. Notice who hates everyone...

Did you know Alice Waters, the pioneer restauranteur in Berkeley, CA, is a Jersey girl? I mean it should be obvious. Send someone from Jersey to the corners of the Earth and it’s instantly more interesting.

I know, I know. I’m prone to promoting Jersey. Even if she wasn’t from here, she’s still awesome. I’ve never really met her directly. I’ve listened to her speak and stood 3 feet away from her, but she doesn’t know me and I don’t know her personally. She’s my biggest culinary influence in terms of ideology. (My biggest influence in practice is Kurt Gutenbrenner.) I went to culinary school during the whole Ferran Adria El Bulli era, but aside from looking cool it never appealed to me. Don’t get me wrong, I ate a lot of molecular gastronomy and Ferran Adria is amazing. It’s just not my thing. I don’t really think it’s important to be creative in food. I’m more of the stand back and enjoy nature kind of guy. In my deepest dreams I’d rather be some hunter-gatherer wandering the land, experiencing new flowers, herbs, and dangers. So Alice Waters’ cooking and style is my middle ground between idealism and reality. It’s both cultured and raw. There’s something about the seasonality and simplicity that feels right. Obviously there’s a lot of influence from Europe but it’s thoroughly American.

When I lived in the Bay Area I used to hang in Berkeley a lot. My favorite used bookstore is there, and the parks are awesome. I used to walk by her restaurant, Chez Panisse, and see her going over each table before opening. That shouldn’t be dismissed. She’s an older woman now and is successful to the point where others wouldn’t even be bothered to do that.

Ideologically within food she is my hero, although I wouldn’t say our stuff follows it. And partially it’s because of my own conditioning. Alice Waters is from Chatham. I don’t know if you’ve ever been there but it’s a rather nice town. When I was a kid in elementary school at St Anthony’s in Passaic, we visited another school in Chatham for the day. My friends and I were in shock. The school had their own falcon. They had a nice patch of grass to picnic and have lunch. At our school we played football in the parking lot, and the only patch of grass was more glass than grass. I didn’t even know towns like that existed. I thought Montclair was nice. So I’ve partly maintained this immigrant/urban/lower class perspective along with all my other influences. I love seasonality, but I’m also fine with eating a bowl of rice and beans everyday for months. When I was growing up it seemed rather fancy to some of my friends that I ate canned tuna for lunch. So the food at Chez Panisse and the style of Californian food Alice Waters nurtured is cuisine to me where one can stop and be satisfying on multiple levels. It’s still in a place that loves the natural while still being sophisticated and cultured. It’s not so much as a restaurant but rather just hanging in her kitchen. And that’s where true culture is: in the home and in the kitchen. Sometimes we forget that and go to these trendy restaurants that are flashy and fancy but are at the end of the day mediocre and empty. They’re rooted in nothing.

I miss her food although I don’t really miss the Bay Area. Alice Waters is a hero. No, she’s a saint. A Jersey saint.

This weekend will have an array of Filipino flavors. Usually around this time of the year was a celebration at the park in Passaic for Philippine Independence Day from Spain. There would be folk dancing, a ton of food, and a bunch of unintentionally hilarious speeches. I can’t tell you how many times I heard a speech from some overly serious old person that was incorrect or someone sang a song against religion during an actual church service. I’d always be that guy in the back waiting to laugh out loud while everyone else had no reaction.

I’m “half Filipino” as they’d say in America. I grew up in a fairly tight knit Filipino American family which means there was always drama, and some of us are just fucking crazy. My family is from an island in the central part of what they call the Philippines. When I was a kid flying into the island, the airport was just a field with goats roaming around. Now it’s a fancy glass building although there are still goats around. As I’ve gotten older I tend to identify more with the island rather than with the whole country partially because I hate Manila. The traffic and crowding are too much, and they’re rather elitist much like Manhattanites are to the rest of America. Plus on the home island of Panay you can cruise around without much hassle. You can ride up to the hills or to the beaches to enjoy the day.

My cousin Randy and I getting ready to do some folk dance.

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Filipino culture is weird: there’s this strong matriarchal streak and yet it’s also machismo as hell. They never managed to resolve the pre-Spanish with the Latin. My grandparents (pictured below in the gallery) were symbolic of that to me. My grandmother was like royalty. She could roll her own cigar and still look like the Queen of England in my eyes. Her authority was her presence. She died when I was very young. But she left a mark on me and that ounce of aristocratic attitude comes from her. My grandfather on the other hand was a hard ass. For most of the time I knew him he was paralyzed from the neck down. But he was the patriarch despite all that. With his personality and will, and if he had the opportunity to be well educated, he would have been a billionaire. This is going to sound bizarre but the way he lived for all those years- laying in a bed, unable to do anything- the way he could command a room amazed me. It was as if he was proof that you can overcome most things in life and still crack jokes with 90% your body function being taken away from you. An iron fucking will. Whenever I feel down and pathetic I think of them. I remember you need to have heart first and everything else is just added options. I believe that generally speaking that’s the Filipino way.

Uncle “Buddy”

But the quintessential Filipino American experience to me is my uncle “Buddy”. And I dedicate this weekend especially to him. He more than anyone imbued into me a personality where you work like a madman but maintain a great sense of humor. And no matter what you try to be a nice guy. You can be surrounded by shit but still maintain yourself at the end of the day. He worked on fields in California picking asparagus and on a fishing boat filleting endless fish. I visited him in LA as a kid and will never forget hearing the automatic gunfire; and I thought my hometown was bad, lol. So when I go to the Philippines he’s someone I seek out right away. We cruise around the home island in his Jeep Wrangler and watch UFC fights in front of the electric fan. He once told me a story where he went to work for my grandfather on the farm. In his prime, my grandfather was terrifying. He didn’t care how big or tough you were. Anyone could be broken and rebuilt. And he made my uncle do things to where he would cry and could barely stand up. But it meant later on in life he could put up with all kinds of shit. I’ve never experienced anything like that. But I grew up around people who did. And that’s that immigrant power not just Filipinos can have but anyone whether from the Dominican Republic, Cameroon, or Russia. Jersey is blessed to always have a steady flow of immigrants. It keeps life real, and sometimes the Filipino dream or the Brazilian dream is a ticket to America. In turn it reinvigorates those of us lucky to be born here.

If I didn’t have good music to listen to I’d probably lose my fucking mind. I basically got through my shit hole high school by listening to Tool, Foo Fighters, and massive amounts of techno. In college I was with the Strokes, Blur, Rage Against the Machine, Alice In Chains, and more heavy doses of techno. And in California it was everything and anything but especially Thee Oh Sees and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Always more techno. I love dissolving into the music.

I can’t wrap my head around today’s music so I just listen to older stuff or whatever I used to. It is important that I have a good playlist while I’m banging out the gelato. I need high energy up to the point where I’m nearly high. I need to feel like I’m in front of crowd of people and just waiting until it’s so hot and crazy that I dive into the mass and disappear. So while I’m alone at the store from 6:45-1:30 there’s Agent Orange, Deftones, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and Thee Oh Sees blasting. And of course more techno.

I don’t necessarily get to interact with many people these days especially with covid around, but I think I’m a pretty cool guy to be around. I mean I don’t give a shit who you are. If you are cool you are cool. Here in Jersey who cares about all that bullshit category of this or that. All I try to see is the persona, the character, and especially the eyes. This blog is sort of my way to put myself out there for people to see. I want everyone to know that I fucking love this shit. It makes me go crazy and the busier we are the crazier I am.

You can’t pay attention to society today. It will suck the life out of you. It’s like that one guy you know that isn’t even really a friend but somehow you know him. He’s always asking you to help move something and he’s like “I’ll buy you a slice.” But somehow you don’t even get that slice and you end up with a pulled back. That’s what society is today, always taking much more than you get out of it. Fuck that.

Music is free, sort of. It’s liberating unlike so many things in our civilization. So do me a favor, go find that awesome song you can’t help but go crazy for and blast it. Blast it so your parents or roommates can hear it. Blast it so your neighbors can hear it. Lol blast it so your kid looks up for once and away from the phone. Blast is as you drive by our store. Go wild. Go crazy. Lose yourself. Feel unstoppable and drunk on your own passion.

Below I’ve attached an article someone asked us to write for their online magazine which as of now hasn’t manifested itself. I’ll leave it unedited from when I submitted so it can maintain the vibe. It was written at the height of covid during the summer of 2020.

APEM. The point is to bloom. 

The following is the APEM story “in our words” and as a warning we speak Jersey. Clutch those pearls and watch those britches.  

APEM is a gelato and sorbet company founded by Alex Saneski and Jennifer Ko. APEM is about Alex’s desire to just “spin that shit” meaning to just freestyle the gelato making to our desires and make customers feel amazing. It is also a means of celebrating being back in New Jersey after so many years away. And APEM is rooted in a spiritual outlook to bloom is the point of life.

The story of APEM starts with its predecessor, Cremeux Ex Machina which was our previous business in California. Whereas one focused on form the other tries to capture the essence of a gelato store. I like to think of them as opposites or mirror images, but that is not true. Cremeux Ex Machina exists within APEM just like how my own reserved stoic personality exists within my uncouth side and vice versa. 

Jennifer and I moved to California to start our own gelato company, Cremeux Ex Machina.  Jennifer is the classic SoCal girl. She goes to the mall, hangs at the beach, loves to cruise around,  worked at In & Out, and food is sushi and tacos. For her it’s home. My own desire to be in California was fueled by an idea to create the ideal gelato company. Upon arriving we had no real idea where to open up. We looked around SoCal and the Bay Area. At some point along the way we decided to focus on finding good milk. I became very specific to Jersey Cow milk due to its higher fat content and the chill persona of the cows themselves. We called up and down the state to dairy farms and you know how many positive responses we got? One. A dairy farmer from the Northern California town Petaluma along the Sonoma-Marin border was game. 

Cremeux Ex Machina was a methodical project. Before we founded it I spent time making gelato for someone else and grew to the point where I wasn’t free. As Cremeux Ex Machina we focused on sourcing the best possible ingredients across the board. We bought strawberries, peaches, and citrus from some of the best farms in California. As Cremeux Ex Machina we did things according to the seasons and focused on a certain purity in our flavors. I now had the ability to make my ideal gelato company. But I fell into a trap and happened to be in the worst place for it. 

Ideology is something that forms the fabric of our modern society, but never have I seen it so strong as in the San Francisco Bay Area. It’s suffocating. Yet we conformed to it. It being the LOS: Local, Organic, and Sustainable as we like to phrase it. In a way its a refreshing ideology if you drink a bit of it here and there. But a full dose in a place like California is certifiable. The only truly free people there are the vagabonds. It’s not that I don’t agree with the ideas, but when you discover that in a modern mass society those ideas are impossible then what else is there to be but jaded? We had amazing customers there, but the whole scene was too much. We just couldn’t flower. 

Cremeux Ex Machina was an intellectual pursuit, and APEM is more about an abandonment of that. As Cremeux Ex Machina we were big on sourcing the very best milk possible, and as APEM I know I can make amazing gelato with milk bought at a random 7/11 (though that’s not the case lol). If anything I now see myself as a DJ and people are calling in making requests. Sometimes I’m like “hell yeah son let’s blast that shit”. And other sometimes I’m like “what are you talking about dude that song is bombed out”.

To bloom into something where people can feel amazing and let themselves go is the core goal of APEM. Actually I don’t even want amazing. When people eat our gelato I want them to feel like gods where everything dissolves away. It’s crazy to think that way and its not possible but that’s the emotion we put into it.

I finally came back to New Jersey after nearly 8 years rotting away in California. Jennifer and I were determined to continue making gelato. Being from New Jersey saved my life. Or rather being from Passaic did. If I wasn’t I’d surely be dead by now. The little world it provided for me growing up exposed me to so many things good and bad. This is also a place where everyone’s from somewhere else and provides us with the opportunity to travel through the flavors. For some it will remind them of home in their new home. So a core focus of APEM has been about being here in New Jersey. I don’t mean in a cliche kind of way, but rather you just shut up, go, and everyone’s part of the party. What’s more Jersey than that?

APEM can’t be creative, fun, interesting, or achieve its goal unless it’s rooted in a spiritual element. And I’m not referring to some new age kind. I mean the kind where you take joy in doing the same thing over and over again as if it was part of your soul. This is because in order to really bloom your roots have had to get strong and break through the concrete of this society. I’ve been mentioning the importance of blooming, but APEM isn’t a flower. It’s a weed. Many won’t even know we exist, some may dismiss us, a few may hate us, but at the end of it we will thrive and bloom in spite of it all for however long possible. And all we need is a crack whereas most need fancy soil with balanced PH.

Lastly, we also don’t see APEM as a forever project. At some point it’s going to need to go away. Partly this is my own spiritual sense, but I also think that most businesses that last for too long become stale and the customers become worn out. The whole thing becomes a routine. I suppose maybe that’s the goal of businesses today, but very few of them achieve a consistency to their original story. The only way I envision APEM lasting beyond 8 years is if it’s all like a giant gelato party. Imagine open only on the weekends but we go hard where you get lost in the chocolate gelato, the saffron creamsicle gelato tastes like some fierce Andalusian woman dancing flamenco, and the tropical punch sorbet just wants to make you strip naked and dump yellow paint all over yourself and run around town. None of this will ever happen, but it’s the emotion behind APEM. Besides the ending is the usually the best part. 

My last point is that life is dirty, chaotic, unpredictable, and most of the time disappointing. But that doesn’t mean to give up doing your own thing. In fact, your life should be partially about waving a giant middle finger to all the wankers. As Cremeux Ex Machina we wanted to create an environment where we could bloom into a wondrously beautiful planned out flower. But at some point we realized not only was that uncontrollable it wasn’t desirable. Life’s a sidewalk crack and bloom like the craziest weed you’ve ever seen. Just go with it and see where it takes you. 

Are you ready? Because I am ready. I’m sooooooo ready. We will be slanging out the gelato for 2021 and we are here for you. I’ll be jamming my flow all year. So if there’s anything you wanna request just hit us up. Just nothing corny please, like none of that boy band type gelato you know what I’m saying. Otherwise just kick back and enjoy my gelato playlist.

We spent a good portion of our winter visiting Jenny’s family in California. Here are a few pictures for your enjoyment. I had written a post with our experiences there, but instead opted to focus on pictures. It is my observation that physically California is a very beautiful place. Its spirit on the other hand is something else entirely. This time around I told Jenny that after nearly 8 years living there I finally felt like a Californian. The realization made me laugh and shudder. Luckily, I can be multiple things at once so here’s to being back in New Jersey.

Get ready for a lot of ocean pics.

Big Sur, California. It is one of my favorite places in the world. Due to the location and terrain it feels like the point where nature, civilization, and the void intersect.

I love to bike. In California I am lucky enough to be able to just walk out of the house and follow a path that eventually leads to the beach. It’s not that close lol. It’s 14 miles one way, but totally worth it.

Mussel Shoals. Unlike the Jersey Shore there are endless miles of coast thats relatively undeveloped in California. And some beaches you can find temporary surfer camps although they aren’t the friendliest guys around.

California is the fruit basket of America. One of my favorite citrus towns is Ojai in Ventura County. The weather is always primo here and even though the town has grown in the last 5 years it still has a quiet vibe. I would ride my bike for miles and come upon stands along the side of the road selling citrus.

Irvine, California. You’d swear this town was designed by Germans. The local roads have speed limits of 55mph, and everyone goes 70mph.

In & Out the California classic. It’s where Jenny first got a taste of working in food.

Oh you thought California was all beaches and mountains? Nope. It’s still one of the top crude oil producers in the country. How’s that environmentalism working out for you?

Contrary to what you might think, this is the most Orange County pic ever.

McWay Falls.