Some aspects of life just come naturally, easily meshing with our personality and interests in a seamless and enduring way. Such is the case with my lifelong passion for food.

From a very early age, I made food a central part of my life. My mother was an excellent self-taught cook and baker. She grew up in poverty during the Great Depression, losing her father too young, with her mother making ends meet through a variety of odd jobs, including taking in laundry for some of the more well-off households in their hometown of Hammond, Ind. So cooking in her childhood was simple and functional. When she married my father during World War II, just before his ship departed for the Pacific Theater, she armed herself with a copy of “Joy of Cooking,” which had been published a few years back, and started working her way through it.

I was the last of six children, so by the time I came around, my mother was an ace in the kitchen. I started earning my stripes at her side, shoulder-high with our kitchen counter, where she would craft our daily sustenance from scratch with abundant love and expertise.

My first food memory is making biscuits at her side, showing how to cut them with a quick motion straight up and down to get the best rise. She would sweeten the dough for shortcakes, which we would adorn with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, abundant sliced strawberries, and some freshly whipped cream, often accented with a hint of vanilla.

I pride myself as a faithful omnivore, always game to try new foods and flavors. Over the three-plus decades of my career in food industry publishing, I’ve tasted a world of flavors.

But the enduring, sublime simplicity of vanilla always entices. Perhaps it’s the power of that early childhood memory. It’s always my first choice for ice cream. In the western suburbs of Chicago where my parents settled, and where my wife and I have raised our children (and still call home), one of the best local vanilla ice creams comes from Oberweis, a perpetual mainstay in my home freezer and the destination of choice for two decades of celebratory moments with my kids.

While my affinity of vanilla will never wane, I still love sampling new and innovative flavors. Every year at the IDFA Ice Cream & Cultured Innovation Conference, attendees have an amazing opportunity to sample and vote for new ice cream flavors as part of an innovation competition sponsored by Dairy Foods. The winning Lavender Lemon Butter Cookie flavor from Kent Precision Foods Group was one of my favorites, taking the award for most innovative new flavor (already commercialized). Including bakery flavors in the mix prominently featured in the winners this year, with Brownie Batter Cookie Dough from Hudsonville taking the top prize for the novelty category. The Dubai Bar Bliss entrant from IRCA Group received the most votes for the prototype flavor category, combining a diversity of sweet and slightly savory flavor notes into something truly original.

The sensory pleasures of that abundance of ice cream flavor innovation still resound. But despite the enticing allure of something new, I know that I’ll always still go straight to vanilla the next time I’m at the grocery store or local ice cream parlor.

Editor's Note: This is a blog written by Dairy Foods Publisher Doug Peckenpaugh.