You’ve got your chance today to celebrate our nation’s independence as well as the fact that July is National Hot Dog Month by competing in the Dairy Inn annual hot dog eating contest!
According to the Dairy Inn (1201 9th St. N., St Petersburg, FL 33701; 727-822-6971) website, “The Dairy Inn is St Petersburg’s oldest ice cream parlor, serving residents and visitors for 62 years (five generations).” Their log line is “Good Eats and Cold Treats, Almost Famous Since 1947.”
Last year, Inkwatu covered Old Farmer’s Creamery, one of my favorite ice cream palaces here in St. Pete. I tend to go there for their homemade, hand packed ice cream. However, Dairy Inn is my choice for soft serve. It’s different from Dairy Queen’s soft serve. Dairy Inn’s is more like old-fashioned homemade ice milk.
Speaking of homemade ice cream, do you remember making it when you were a kid? It was always my task to crank the darn thing while my dad supervised and poured on the rock salt to increase the coldness of the ice. You can get quite nice electric ones
Yesterday, I was full of the holiday spirit and didn’t feel like making homemade, so I stopped by Dairy Inn for a soft serve, hot fudge and pecan special, pictured below. I tend to associate ice cream with the 4th of July even more than hot dogs. Here’s a few good links on the history of ice cream (can you imagine a world before ice cream? Horrors!):
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food inventions
ice cream history
ice cream cone history
ice cream cone invention
ice cream facts
I’ll probably skip the hot dog contest and make a veggie dog here at home since July is also National Veggie Hot Dog Month!
If you’re looking for some activities for the weekend, check out the Baynews 9 list of 4th of July activities. To watch the fireworks, there are three very good locations:
- the St. Pete Pier — this also faces toward Tampa so you get a view of theirs as well as St. Petersburg’s own
- the roof of the Tampa International Airport parking garage — you can see Tampa’s, St. Pete’s, and all the bergs to the east
- the beaches — all the beaches have their own shows, so your head can swivel from one to another along the crescent of islands
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
MY job, when I was a kid, to sit on top of the ice cream churn on a towel to keep the ice down while my dad cranked away. Our favorite flavor was peach. Nothing better! And I gotta say, I admire your ability to eat a veggie hot dog period, let alone on the 4th of July!
Happy 4th!
Marty
I stumbled into this post while Googling for something else, and it brought back memories. My cousin and I used to walk to Dairy Inn when we were kids, and we would also walk to a convenience store that was nearby (I think it was called Watson’s) to buy comic books and Now And Laters. I wonder if kids still do that?