Start with oatmeal cookies (the homemade variety, of course), add ice cream, make sandwiches, then sit back and watch the enjoyment as happy people eat them.

Kids love ice cream sandwiches, and adults feel like kids as they eat them.

Raisins are always a great addition to oatmeal cookies, but when they are frozen, they can get hard and difficult to chew. It seems the perfect way to get their sweet flavor in an ice cream sandwich is to puree them before incorporating them into the dough.

I discovered, too, that giving raisins the puree treatment fools those who dont' care for those little dried grapes. My husband is a good example. He won't eat anything that involves raisins. I offered him one of these cookies, still warm from the oven. After he ate about three of them, he asked, "What is that flavor that I can't quite pinpoint? Dates?" (He likes dates – hates raisins). I thought it safe to share the secret with him. How could he say he didn't like them after already wolfing down three with great gusto? He gave me a sheepish little grin and grabbed another cookie.

If anyone asks what my favorite fruit is, I always answer peaches, but not just any peach. White peaches are my absolute favorite fruit. Besides eating peaches as they are, my other favorite ways to enjoy them are in desserts. I love this peach galette, a foolproof fruit tart recipe that I rely on every summer. But I also love to make sorbets, ice creams, and sherbets. What could be a better dessert than a cooling scoop or two? This summer it's white peach sherbet all the way.

Just think of the sherbets from when you were a kid and the ones available in the supermarket. Don't you ever wonder what those fluorescent colors are actually made of? They're hardly fruit. Though as a kid I too loved eating them, but not anymore. This recipe couldn't be easier. Sherbet is unlike ice cream in that the milk or cream is not cooked. In ice cream you almost always need to make a custard from eggs and milk and simmer it until thick. Sherbet is simply puréed fruit mixed with milk and then frozen.

“Brooklyn” is my drop dead cute, young hair colorist at Frederick Fekkai! What do we have in common other than the color of my roots, you ask? Food! We both love to cook. This morning I was mouthing off about my newest secret food sin – Hagen Das Dulce de Leche Frozen Yogurt with Maldon Salt flakes sprinkled on top….

“OMG, have you heard of The Big Gay Ice Cream Truck?” he asks.

“OMG No? A Gay Ice Cream Truck???”

“… With a painted rainbow soft cone and Disco music! I had the best vanilla bean ice cream with Bariani olive oil and sea salt!”

OMG!

I went to the web site.

Remember as a child running up the block trying to catch the Good Humor Man? Well, with Twitter you can chase the Gay Truck all over town!

A group of good friends, connected by a love of politics and good food, always used to get together every August in Santa Barbara.  Life slowed down; we’d cook together using all local produce – sweet corn, plum tomatoes, Armenian cucumbers, peppers, tomatillos, Blenheim apricots, avocadoes, Santa Rosa plums – and then feast as the sun went down behind rolling hills planted with avocadoes and lemons.

So you can imagine our excitement when we heard that Johnny Apple – the legendary political columnist and food writer at the New York Times – was coming to town with his wife Betsey.  Johnny was (as many have noted) a force of nature. I first met Johnny when he came to LA to do a feature on Asian Pacific food.  We hit three restaurants in four hours one evening, going from Vietnamese to Chinese dim sum to a Chinese restaurant famous for its “pork pump”.  I was so exhausted I begged off the next three days of eating. I don’t think I’ve seen anyone enjoy food and wine more (even that third dinner you have to eat when you’re a critic.)

  She leans in toward me, her elbows on the counter. She is tall, blonde, and very slender. She’s wearing a tight black skirt and a white blouse open one button just past modest. A maid’s apron circles her waist. She begins to speak but I raise my hand and gesture for her to wait. I am listening to the teenage girl with the long legs and short shorts standing to the blonde’s left. She is a regular but, tonight, she wants more than usual.

“I want my pint of chocolate chip but I also need a cheese steak, to go and a regular hoagie without onions. They’re so busy at the sandwich counter, can’t you take my order?

Summer brings long days, hot weather, and a symphony of seasonal sound. Crickets. Baseball ball games.  Steaks sizzling on the grill.  Children playing.  And the unmistakable music of ice cream trucks.  With tinkling melodies pouring forth these motorized Pied Pipers roll through the streets, and children come running from all directions. Clutching fistfuls of coins, they surround the truck like honeybees around a flower, then straggle away blissfully licking their favorite ice cream treats.

Frozen confections come in many forms. Cones piled high with teetering scoops. Soft slurpy swirls.  Popsicles.  Cookie sandwiches.  Sodas and shakes.  Fruit juice bars. Gelatos and granitas.  Sherbets and sorbets.  Luscious sundaes swimming in sweet sauces, dusted with toppings and crowned in whipped cream. We can thank modern refrigeration techniques for the myriad of choices available, but the desire to cool off with a refreshing cold treat on a hot sweltering day has been around since antiquity.

In Margate, New Jersey, there is an ice cream shop that time forgot. It is called Two Cents Plain and it has little white wire chairs with red and white striped seats, red and white wallpaper festooned with whimsical line drawings of flappers in long necklaces and gents in boaters, and a jar on the counter where customers can deposit tip money for the scoopers’ college funds. It looks just the same today as it did in 1979, when I had my fifth birthday party there.

We had the whole place to ourselves that day! What a thrill for a five-year-old. More thrilling still were the ice cream “clowns” (still on the menu) which were presented thusly: a scoop of ice cream on a plate, and a sugar cone inverted on top as a hat, point side up, and a face drawn on the scoop of ice cream with Red Hots. I had asked for a baby sister for my birthday that year and instead was presented with a baby brother, and the ice cream clowns went a long way towards placating me.

For most of my dad’s young life, he lived above and worked at Felcher’s, his parents’ candy store/ neighborhood lunch counter, tucked between P and G's Bar and Grill and Simpson's Hardware Store on Amsterdam Avenue between 73 and 74th Streets. Christopher Morely, imagined the man of the future while watching my dad as a tiny boy play in front of that store and immortalized him in his novel Kitty Foyle.

Throughout college and law school my dad scooped ice cream and served meals at this lunch counter, as his then girlfriend, my mother, perched herself on a stool out front, eating fudgicles and enticing much of the passing parade, including Frank Gifford and his pals, the other NY Giants. I can still see the scoop my father kept from Felcher’s with its well-worn wooden handle and the scored thumb press that pushed a slim metal band, which would release the perfect scoop every time.

My husband Leo loves ice cream.  I like it, but he loves it. For a wedding present, we received a wooden ice cream maker that like the old fashioned ones, needed to be filled with ice and rock salt, but unlike the old fashioned ones, could be plugged in and churned the ice cream without the 'elbow grease.'  Once every few years, we'd pull it out and impress ourselves by making a batch of lovely vanilla ice cream, but it was always a big production for the results.  About 6 or 7 years ago, as a birthday gift for my ice cream loving husband who almost always has a quart of vanilla in the freezer, I bought a double Cuisinart automatic ice cream machine.  It consists of a motorized bottom, plastic churners and plastic covers with two metal containers which I keep in the freezer at all times.