I categorize soft-serve ice cream in my head as a treat, a sweet I can�t make at home that I must deliberately travel into the world to attain. Some folks may own an ice cream machine that creates a version of this cold sweet, but not me. Two weeks ago, I waxed poetic about soft serve, but this time, I�m going the other direction. Hand-dipped ice cream, or hard ice cream, is premade, put into a container, and is then scooped out into a formed ball, if you�re good at it. This is the kind of ice cream I can buy at the grocery store and keep in my freezer. But sometimes, hand-dipped ice cream is worth leaving the house for. ...

Just when I thought I�d run out of new restaurants to try, a friend with good judgment suggested I might want to take a quick road trip over to City Tavern in downtown Perryville for some good old homestyle cooking. I was intrigued by the suggestion, and immediately squeezed the visit onto my Sunday "to do" list, right between church and grocery shopping. ...