Cremola Foam: the taste of summer

Overwhelmed as I am with receiving comments, I know that what you really wanted to read about was Cremola Foam.

I have a Useful Notebook that gets carried around, partly so I can work out which children’s book to buy for which new arrival and that kind of thing, but it’s useful for ideas about blog posts too.  Sometimes it’s as good to think about writing as it is to do it – like food in that respect.

Topping the list of items to write about is Cremola Foam.  Going to wikipedia, fount of all immediately accessible information, I discover that I have the name wrong – it is in fact Creamola Foam: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creamola_Foam

Growing up as a Mackenzie, a big part of family tradition was going on holiday to the Isle of Jura.  It’s a few generations since we had direct relatives living there, but there’s a family cottage, and a lot of shared history.  It’s where my dad spent his summer holidays too, and part of those holidays, for both of us, was creamola foam.

Part of the mystique of creamola foam was the buying it en route to Jura.  We’d drive up from the north of England or central England, according to where we were living at that point, and stay over with my great aunts in Greenock.  (Greenock is indeed the place to live if you are an aunt.)  We would then drive to Gourock, just up the coast, and get the ferry to Dunoon, to continue the journey.

And once we arrived in Gourock, anticipating the first ferry of the journey, it was time to buy the small pot of creamola foam to induce the holiday mood.  In Dad’s day, it was mostly lemon flavour, in mine, orange.  But mainly really it allows you to have an absurdly fizzy drink and a huge amount of happiness (and no doubt sugar), combined.

Creamola foam was also available in the shop on Islay, after the second ferry, and before the third, over to Jura itself.  Should you run out on the holiday, there would usually be a day trip to Islay, and an opportunity to stock up again.

One year, I attempted the impossible.  I brought a full pot of it home with me.  Now I could continue the holiday feeling.  But then, it being precious, it was hard to make a move to start it.  A month or two down the line, and it was already hardening into a lump.  And somehow, it didn’t taste the same at home.

Reading wikipedia, I discover the advertising boast that creamola foam was ‘fully sweetened’.  You bet.  This is a Scottish foodstuff, after all.  Needless to say, they don’t write advertising copy like that these days – or perhaps, they just hide the fact that something is fully sweetened.

Tastes of childhood.  Perhaps sometimes it’s best for some things to remain at a distance.  Worse, perhaps, to discover now that I didn’t like it – although again, wikipedia indicates that there’s a bit of an attempt going on to bring it back.

With rain on the menu most days at the moment, it’s good to think about summer at times, even distant summers.  Next stop, soda streams, I feel.

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