I have a Rubik’s Cube. It’s still in the original plastic packaging. Oh, it’s been opened. It’s been twisted and turned and scuffed and thrown across the room. It’s not solved back to its original six-sided colored splender. It’s a wonderful array of rainbow hued sides. It’s not the perfect cube. And as far as I can tell, if it continues to call my cedar chest its forever home, it never will be solved to become a perfect cube.
Poor thing.
However my Rubik’s cube is not the cube I would like to discuss. No, I’m on the hunt for the perfect — ice cube! Scoff if you will, but this has been quite a journey.
It all started one warm summer afternoon, outside, under a nice shade tree, having some iced tea. Ah, the sun shone through the lazy summer breeze blown leaves. Those rays hit the glass of the pitcher holding the golden brown tea and sparkling ice cubes floating inside. It was quite Norman Rockwell like. Right up until I went to pour the tea. That’s when I noticed them. Little white specks of stuff floating in my pitcher. Like they belonged there. There were lots of them. As I set the pitcher down the larger white things floated to the bottom while the little ones just hung around, floating, waiting for the chance to escape into a glass. It was calcium. It’s in our water. It’s in nearly everyone’s water.
So I had discovered the problem, but to fix it would take me down a path that’s something like going down the rabbit hole with Alice.
We have an ice maker installed in our refrigerator. It puts out as much ice as we seem to need. I like lots of ice in my drinks. I’m the one at the drive up window who asks for lots of ice in my drinks. I figure my “lots of ice” evens out with the person who asks for a drink with no ice. But sometimes even if I ask for lots of ice I still get the amount of ice the person pouring the drinks likes in their drink. Could be a regular amount, or just a putt putt of ice. Oh, I have slid off the icy road, haven’t I?
With an ice maker there’s an in-line water filter. Supposedly to filter all misguided boogie worms and the like out of the water before water reaches the ice maker. Thankfully I don’t have any boogie worms in my ice, but apparently the calcium is too tiny to be caught by the filter’s filtering filter stuff. So when I use the ice I’m in essence drinking the stuff my bones are made of, calcium. Yep, I’m drinkin’ bones! Yummy.
OK so I have identified the problem. Now to find a quick, easy fix. Should be a snap right? Well that’s what I thought too.
We often buy groceries out of town. To keep milk cold and lettuce crisp on the ride home we buy a bag of ice and throw it into our cooler. When we get that ice home we call it “town ice.” Town ice comes in several configurations. Little squares like most bars serve. Chunks of different sizes, big round cubes with holes in the center and more. Over the years we have found we really like town ice. It’s crystal clear and even though you might think water has no taste, town ice is always better than the ice from our ice maker. With that knowledge and the discovery of extra calcium in my ice, the hunt for the perfect way to make ice began.
I need to condense the glaciers of information that was gathered. From the refrigerator manufacturer, a refrigerator repairman, a guy who serviced an ice maker at a motel we stayed at, friends, a commercial ice maker salesman — he was willing to sell us a $3,500 ice maker that would make like a hundred pounds of ice every day. Hey I thought we could make an igloo and rent it out! But we didn’t.
So ice is made two ways. Freezing from the outside in, like in your freezer. Or from the inside out, like in a really nice ice machine. You can have ice cube trays and use ice straight from the faucet, an ice maker that has the now infamous in-line filter that only filters out boogie worms and not bones, but the only way to get town ice without buying it in town? Spend and spend and spend to get a filter system that will even take air out so you get those wonderful clear cubes.
In essence it goes like this. If you get things floating in your ice? Just drink ‘em. Who knows maybe since I have always liked lots of ice, that’s why I have never broken a bone. Hmm, could be!
Trina lives in Eureka, Nevada. Her book ITY BITS is on Kindle. Share with her at itybytrina@yahoo.com.
