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I'm surprised that picture didn't melt on its way to your inbox. DC has already surpassed our *annual* average for 90-degree days. So I've maximized my ice cream intake. 'Tis the season, even if that currently means no cones and waiting outside because only four people at a time are allowed in the best scoop shop in the city.

On a particularly steamy walk this month, the cicadas seemed to have joined in a hypnotic, coordinated rhythm. I remembered cicada ice cream – bugs! dessert! – and was stunned to realize that happened nearly a decade ago. One of the books I'm reading considers time a "reality dream" like money, nation-states, etc.

Thankfully, ice cream is quite real. Except this paper version.

Chilled treats have been served around the world for thousands of years, and references to the superior summer element in America start here in the capital region.

A 1744 journal entry from Annapolis, Md., noted that a meal included "Among the Rarities...some fine Ice Cream" possibly made with hail as the cooling agent or, more commonly, with stored ice cut from lakes and rivers the previous winter.

George Washington stocked ice cream pots in his kitchen at Mount Vernon, Va., and Thomas Jefferson kept similar equipment at Monticello, where he churned his own vanilla recipe. Jefferson brought the confection to the White House in 1801, and Dolley Madison featured her own variant at her husband's second inaugural ball in 1813.

British soldiers burning the executive mansion would have curtailed any festivities the following summer.

The real hero arrived in 1843, when Philadelphia inventor Nancy Johnson revolutionized frozen desserts with an "Improvement in the Art of Producing Artificial Ices." Her hand-crank freezer relied on basic principles that still guide homemade ice cream. A little air + sugar, water, milk.

Just make sure your flavors aren't TOO creative, like those in one of my favorite childhood poems.