X-Tra Cheese, Please

July 25, 2007 - 3:30 PM by

I was surfing along the Israel blogosphere the other day when I noticed a banner ad at the bottom of the page that went something like:

“Send a soldier an ice cream” with a picture of a drumstick type chocolate-vanilla treat.

I noticed the grammar. “An” ice cream. Okay so that was a Hebrew to English translation.

Then I clicked.

And I got this page. The Pizza IDF page. From the comfort of your L.A. living room, you can double click, fill in your Master’s or VISA number and send off ice cream, cold fruit soup or as many as 18 pizzas with soda to an entire company of soldiers.

Oh man. This is a scam! I thought.

$2.99 to send a soldier a drumstick ice cream?

Then I thought about the cost of the simple, chocolate covered banana/vanilla/chocolate ice cream varieties sold by beach vendors. About $2.50 and that’s without handling or delivery.

So I went to the site’s “About Us” page. And found out that when the “Deliver Pizza to a Soldier” started back in 2002, The Wall Street Journal gave it a quick nod and daily Hebrew Yediot Ahronot ran a story on the service. During last summer’s war in Lebanon, The Village Voice blog section ran something too.

The notion of scam dropped. Actually, the idea’s nice and pretty funny. Can you imagine a platoon getting the delivery out on a hillside?

“Uh Shimon…you got change for a tip?” “No. I thought you had that covered. Chaim? You got twenty shekels on ya?” “Nope. Sorry man.”

And on it goes.

One menu item, though, Cold Fruit Soup…Somehow I just don’t imagine that one going down in the annals of IDF culinary fame. But it’s never too late to boost gourmet tastes, eh?

Tags: • Category: A New Reality, Food, Israeliness, Life 

Comments

7 Comments on X-Tra Cheese, Please

  1. Nicole on Wed, Jul 25th 2007 4:04 PM

    2. Sorry, you lost me – what’s wrong with saying “Send a soldier an ice cream”? Surely “an” is correct here?
    Or maybe it’s only an issue in American English, and for those of use who speak “normal” English it makes perfect sense :-)

  2. ifyouwillit... on Wed, Jul 25th 2007 5:05 PM

    3. I heard about this a while back, nice to hear it’s still up and running.

  3. Stephanie on Wed, Jul 25th 2007 10:06 PM

    4. “An Ice Cream cone” rather than “An ice cream” is how i learnt (sic) it…Queen’s English, indeed

  4. David All on Wed, Jul 25th 2007 11:24 PM

    5. I remember the Send a Pizza to the IDF, when it started back in 2002 at the time of Operation Defensive Shield. Often a Pizza was sent to a unit that had killed Palestinian gunmen, terrorists or suicide bombers. Glad to see it was being done last year during the Second Lebanon War and it is still going on toward. Had not heard though about the ice cream. Suppose it is sent in a freezer so it does not melt in route.

  5. Liza on Thu, Jul 26th 2007 11:23 AM

    6. Cold fruit soup… Um… Wouldn’t that be the inexplicably popular “compote”, which people like to serve in warm weather?

  6. Stephanie on Thu, Jul 26th 2007 12:11 PM

    7. i couldn’t tell ya but there is such a thing as fruit soup within the melon family for summers. not my style. maybe they meant “fruit salad”?

  7. a nyc mom on Fri, Jul 27th 2007 12:38 PM

    8. An ice cream sounds perfect to me too. Especially an ice cream cone. I think it may well be an American thing. In the same way that Brits and Americans differ in “going for coffee”, or “going for a coffee”.

    Oh, such huge controversies in life!

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