This is an excerpt from the NashVillager newsletter, your human-powered daily guide to Nashville. Click here to subscribe.
I first had Saturated ice cream from a pick-up window at Brightside Bakeshop in the pandemic. I trekked over to the East location in a cloth mask (#tbt) for the pop-up because I was familiar with owner Lokelani Alabanza’s incredible creations at Hattie Jane’s Creamery, where she had made over 300 flavors. And boy was I glad to have tried it.
It was a peach flavor that reminded me of the first spoonful of ice cream scooped off the top of a hot piece of cobbler. I remember having to go back to her Instagram to verify it was, indeed, plant-based.
“I do not do milk,” Alabanza says. “And a lot of people I know don’t do milk. And people will do it because they love it. But it’s painful. So I thought, ‘Well, how do you make a product that’s delicious — it tastes good — and then people want more?'”
Alabanza did not disclose her secret to making such a creamy, non-dairy ice cream when she came by our studios recently. But she did tell WNXP’s Marquis Munson about what inspired this specific kind of ice cream making after she was laid off in the pandemic:
“One of the last times I would see (my friend) alive, I went with a friend to see her and her family in Kentucky — because her father makes ice cream every year — and she said CBD really helped her,” Alabanza explained. “And so on our ride home, I was very sad, you know, that she was sick with breast cancer. And so I was like, ‘What if you had your medicine put into something like ice cream or something that you loved?'”
You can have a taste of the medicine yourself at The Sweetness of Life Culinary Experience this Saturday at the Frist. It’s an ice cream social, but also features food from Bōtanique and drinks from Perfectly Cordial. Hear more about Saturated in the full What Where When-sday interview here.
On Air - 90.3 WPLN-FM