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There is a raging debate on the internet — meaning, there is not really a debate at all, just a lot of people getting pointlessly perky on Twitter — about whether pellet ice is the best ice.
I'm happy to settle that one here and now: No.
The best ice is hard as diamonds and melts with reluctant disdain. We live in an era where ice clatters out of your fridge door on demand, and we regard this as our right as citizens of the West. Some of us still consider this an absolute marvel, because we remember the home ice of our youth: There was a tray in the freezer. It was stuck to the bottom of the compartment. You chipped it free with a knife, hoping you didn't puncture a Freon tube, then you gripped the handle, yanked it back like a very cold parking brake and broke the ice.
This yielded about four usable cubes and 374 fragments, and you lost some skin to the cold metal handle, too.
Our icemaker has a problem: First it's stingy, then it over-shares. When you put a glass against the lever, it thinks about it for a while. Wheels turn. A gargling sound issues from deep inside. Eventually, the icemaker realizes, "Oh, yes, of course, I am being asked to do the only thing I am ever asked to do," and dumps a couple of cubes in the glass.
"Is that enough?" the ice machine asks.
No, it is not, you say, hence the constant pressure of my glass against the lever.
"Fine, here are 327 more ice cubes, the last third of which will clatter to the floor, and you'll kick them under the fridge because no one's watching."
We ran out of ice on our July 4th celebration and had to do with bagged ice. I was a bit surprised to find that it came with a nutritional label.
"Calories: 0"
Well, yes. No one ever sees a guy with a big gut and thinks, "Boy, look at the ice belly on that one." The label also stated that the ice does not provide a significant amount of vitamins or minerals, in case you were hoping to keep scurvy at bay. It also came from Missouri, to my surprise. There is a company in Missouri that ships ice to Minnesota.
How is that possibly economically efficient? Apparently it is, or they wouldn't truck it up here, but selling ice to Minnesotans is really in the coals-to-Newcastle category.
The bag contains a badge asserting the icemaker's membership in the Missouri Valley Ice Manufacturers Association. Nice to see the days of wildcat, every-man-for-himself days of brutal ice infighting are over — unless there are cops at the border, wearing mirrored sunglasses, waiting for some non-dues-paying ice wildcatter to run a load of bootleg cubes over the border.
"That's Bo and Jeb, I know them. Hell, I knew their pappy. Been running illegal ice 'round these parts for decades. Light 'em up."
You wonder whether the Missouri ice cartel has Minnesotans' best interests at heart. Apparently so. The bag says, "Making ICE and friends in America's Heartland." Well, that's sweet, but not necessary. I mean, thanks for the ice and all that, but it's not like we're inviting you over for burgers and beer, like we went to high school together or something.
Anyway. Pellet Ice. Some bored style writer jonesing for clicks wrote a piece about how it's now the trendy, popular ice, preferred by ice connoisseurs. It's made of compressed shards. Also known as hospital ice, or Sonic Ice, after the drive-in chain that uses it. It yields easily to the tooth. It is al dente ice.
It's OK. If some people prefer it, fine; you just fear that they'll build an entire personality around it, as if it were craft beer or beard wax.
The adamantine ice enthusiasts and pellet ice advocates can unite in their contempt of crushed ice, which is the laziest form of ice in existence: "Yeah, I'm ice, technically, but I'm going to knock off work the minute you pour your pop on me and ruinously dilute it." Even shaved ice has the gumption and self-respect to stick around when it's pressed into snow-cone service.
We all can agree that any ice is better than no ice, and that it's good to be in the part of the year where "ice" means the thing in your drink, not the stuff under your feet and wheels.
james.lileks@startribune.com Twitter: @Lileks
