Summertime Treats: Popsicles

Nostalgia might keep you warm, but our love for this icy treat still keeps us cool.

It’s been pretty warm around the Curio & Co. headquarters these past couple of days and everyone’s been feeling it. Fortunately we’ve had a plan to beat the heat that takes us right back to childhood: popsicles.

We’ve been sharing the responsibility for providing office popsicles each day, and I’ll admit that when it was my turn I just grabbed whatever was on sale. But ever since Shirley made us fresh strawberry and mint popsicles, we’ve been coming up with some terrific homemade (officemade?) popsicles. Peach iced tea popsicles? Refreshing. Pear and blueberry? Very tasty. Root beer? Well, they can’t all be winners.

These icy treats have got me thinking about hot summer days as a kid, sitting on the back porch with a popsicle in my hands. Sure, they were sticky and messy (my favorite flavor, cherry, was naturally the worse for staining shorts and shirts), but they were perfect.

The history of popsicles is, if you’ll excuse the pun, sweet. It was eleven-year-old Frank Epperson who invented them by accident in 1905 when he left a powdered drink he was stirring up with a wooden stick over night on his porch. The temperature dropped in the night, and in the morning it was frozen. He was smart enough to realize that he was on to something pretty hot with that icy goodness. Somehow he made it to adulthood without anyone else trying to market the idea, and his “Popsicles” were off and running. Today it’s hard to imagine summer without them.

Now that we’re making our own popsicles n the office, we’re using reusable sticks, which is great for the planet. But I have to admit, I kind of miss chewing on the wooden stick at the end.