Venders in NY still get blocks of ice in the summer, and cover them with a heavy leather cloth-- and then uncover them to "shave" them with a small metal plane that shaves the ice and collects it--
Our shaved ice is serverd with simple fruit flavored syrup--(about $1 for a 10 oz cup, piled high) Not like the shaved ice desserts i had in Indoesian restaurants-- with sweet corn, pea flour threads, and red bean paste..
I think those to be interesting food-- but not quite dessert!
I too, (following an other post) remember the ice man comming round-- we had an electric refrigerator, but the fish monger got ice twice a week, from a big sawdust lined truck. The ice man had a big grinder, and would grind the block into chips, and we all wanted some of the ice chips.. and i was in my teens (late '60's) before we stopped getting fruits from the fruit vender on his horse drawn wagon-- the junk man had a wagon too, The grindstone man had a bike like contraption, that could either let him peddle away-- or turn the grindstone. But by the '60's he was in a truck. I still have a grindstone man that come up my block-- and all the women run out into the street with our knives drawn!-- he clangs his bell, and goes very slowly... and then stops and sharpens all my knives, and scissors too.
Its stange-- but that is one of the things i like about NY-- this big modern city still has shaved iced and grindstone's coming round, ringing their bells... a sort of timelessness.
