Social Cow
- 4 days ago
- 3 min read
Updated: 3 hours ago
My name is Siobhan Redick, and I am one of the owners of the social cow ice cream inside the market at 7th Street. We specialize in creating experiences through ice cream. We have 12 flavors of hand-dipped ice cream and a vintage truck that we do private events with.
Funny enough, the dish that brings me back to my childhood is ice cream. I spent a lot of time with my grandparents, and we just ate ice cream a lot. Like there were a lot of grandkids and cousins running around and it was just something that our grandparents gave us so much so that my grandfather Nick named me Ice Cream Jones. Anytime I have ice cream, it just brings me right back to being at my grandparents' house and running around with my cousins on a hot summer day.
The handwritten recipe that we use to incorporate in our ice cream is my mom's sweet potato pie recipe. Although my mom tends not to write things down, she's such a good cook that she could just make things up on the fly and she has everything memorized, but her sweet potato pie is something that we just have come to love and enjoy around the holidays. And so, we really wanted to recognize my mom and just that phenomenal pie and put it in some ice cream. So, it's been fun.
I grew up in Brooklyn, New York, in an apartment, very small, just a kind of shotgun kitchen where everyone seemed to gather there, especially at holiday times. But when my mom was cooking, my mom was really the only one allowed in the kitchen. Like, we could not be in her space. And so, she would just be creating and then doing all the things in the kitchen. It was always this. A good hearty smell, right? You knew whatever was cooking was going to be a great meal.
The first time I tried to make that recipe for my family, it was a lot of phone calls to my mom to say, how much cinnamon do I need? How much nutmeg do I use? And my mom saying, you just have to keep adding it until it tastes good. And so, it felt a little bit stressful. It felt like, oh gosh, am I going to get this right? I had these big shoes to fill, but it was fun because it was a way for my mom and I to really just like laugh over this. And the first pie that I made came out way too soupy. The filling just didn't have the consistency of the pie. So, there was a lot of trial and error, but a lot of good laughs between my mom and I. And I eventually got it together, but it was challenging.
You know, I think this recipe, the sweet potato pie, especially being just such a staple for us at holiday time, has influenced me in the way that I prepare meals and food. It just has helped me really focus in on. That one staple, so to say, or that thing that everyone knows and loves and like craves it, it's encouraged me and inspired me to have my signature dishes and make those for my family. And so, when holidays come around, we have something in addition to the sweet potato pie that my kids and my husband look forward to.
So, it really has inspired me to hone in and just have that thing that I'm known for like my mom. You know, if someone, if my grandchildren or great-grandchildren found this recipe, I would want them to know that it was always prepared with a lot of love.
It became a gift to people. We give these sweet potato pies. to fire departments around Charlotte and we bring them when we go to events and we give them as gifts to other people. So, I would definitely want them to know that this recipe has a lot of love and care baked into it. And, you know, that... You could really make people feel good. When you bite into this pie, it does feel like a warm hug. Like you really do feel the love in it. So, I definitely would just want them to know that there is love in cooking and baking and you should share that with people.
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