CLEVELAND, Ohio — Ohio House Republicans want to ban drag queens from library story hours and other children’s events, classifying the appearances as “adult cabaret performances” that are harmful or obscene to children.

We’re talking about the move to appeal to the party’s most conservative base, and conflating drag with obscenity, on Today in Ohio.

Listen online here.

Editor Chris Quinn hosts our daily half-hour news podcast, with impact editor Leila Atassi, editorial board member Lisa Garvin and content director Laura Johnston.

You’ve been sending Chris lots of thoughts and suggestions on our from-the-newsroom text account, in which he shares what we’re thinking about at cleveland.com. You can sign up here: https://joinsubtext.com/chrisquinn.

Here’s what we’re asking about today:

Is this a sign that Republican lawmakers are worried that Issue 1 is going down? Why the sudden push in the House to ban drag queens from library story hours? Are they looking to divert the attention of their base from Issue 1 in case it fails? What would the bill do?

We ran a big story not long ago about dysfunction in the Geauga County water department, and that dysfunction has now become criminal charges. Who is charged, and for what?

When was the last time Ohio executed someone, and how many people now sit on death row?

Why do Cleveland officials have some qualms about a company that wants to run high-speed broadband lines throughout Cleveland?

Our latest Rethinking Chid Care story looks at a success story. How has one couple run a home child care business for three decades?

Ohio State University researchers have discovered a simple way to avoid children handling guns dangerously. What is it?

The water off the Florida coast is above 90 degrees, but Breeze Airlines thinks Northeast Ohioans want to go there in bigger numbers. What have they added to their itineraries?

U.S. Senator JD Vance has been big on culture war items of late. What legislation did he introduce as his latest measure?

Ok, it’s summer. Let’s talk ice cream. Our innovative consumer reporter Sean McDonnell wondered whether he could make more ice cream more cheaply than buying it. What did he find?

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Read the automated transcript below. Because it’s a computer-generated transcript, it contains many errors and misspellings.

[00:00:00] Chris: It’s today in Ohio, so we must be talking about issue one. Again, it’s the chief subject until August 8th. It’s the news podcast. Discussion from cleveland.com and the Plain Dealer. I’m Chris Quinn, and I’m here with Lisa Garvin. Laura Johnston and Courtney Alfi. Like I said, we’re starting with issue one.

Is this a sign that Republican lawmakers are worried that issue one is going down. Why the sudden push in the house to ban drag queens from library story hours? Are they looking to divert attention of their base from issue one in case it fails? Laura, what would this bill do and why now?

[00:00:40] Laura: Well, that’s a very good question.

Why now? And I do think we’ll be talking about issue one even after the August election, cuz it is such a big deal. But this is House Bill 245. It was introduced on Monday, sponsored by 43 members of the G O P super majority. This would ban drag queens from library, library story hours in any kind of kids’ [00:01:00] events.

It classifies the appearance. As adult cabaret performances saying they’re harmful or obscene to children. And if you perform them anywhere, for kids 12 and younger, it’s a felony 13 to 18. I guess that’s just a misdemeanor. So this is coming from a backdrop of a lot of bills that have targeted L G B T Q community.

We’ve talked about the trans athletes, the girls, um, we’ve talked about all sorts of things that the Ohio House is doing. I. This has obviously happened in other states too. Tennessee is probably the most well known, and Ohio’s representatives say they looked at a bunch of bills because they wanted to be really specific.

So they’re saying this isn’t a knee jerk reaction, but. Doesn’t even mention drag queen in the bill. The thing is, I’ve never taken my kids to a drag story hour. I don’t really understand why this is so upsetting. Remember the Wadsworth thing in March where, you know there were neo-Nazis, a white supremacist arrested when all these people came to protest [00:02:00] and there was the one in Chesterland at the church, somebody through a Molotov cocktail.

So people get really, really riled up about this. But the point is to expose kids to diversity, to teach acceptance of yourself and others. Drag. Is not porn. These performers are reading children’s books like the Rainbow Fish, and if you don’t like it, just don’t take your kids.

[00:02:19] Chris: So any, any man that dresses as a woman who reads the Lorax at a library is guilty of a crime.

Mm-hmm. Apparently. I mean that is, that is just weird. Yeah, criminalizing of activity. You just

[00:02:35] Laura: have to figure it’s about firing up this hyper conservative base. And we’ve talked all the time on this podcast about double speak and, and what people are saying and how it doesn’t line up with the truth and, and how when people are talking about issue one, they’re calling it an anti fatherhood initiative, like, like where they’re getting this and for some reason they’ve, I put this idea that drag is porn and obscene and.

It, it’s, I don’t get it. [00:03:00] But

[00:03:00] Chris: that, I mean, that’s where the, the state seems to be going off the rails of late just arbitrarily redefining things. Yes. You know, natural gas is green energy. The Supreme Court famous decision actually came from Cleveland Heights. You know, I, I, I can’t really define porn, but I know it when I see it.

Mm-hmm. It’s not obscene in any sense of the word for a man to dress as a woman. I mean, it’s just, that’s not by any community standard, obscene and, and many who do. You don’t even know. I mean, it’s just bizarre that that the mere act of doing that, picking up a child’s book and reading it to a child, you could be accused of a felony and go to prison.

It’s bizarre. But there’s 46 legislators that signed onto this 43, which makes me think. Look, you’re seeing more and more signs that conservatives and liberals realize issue one attacks us all. That this is a sinister effort to a mass power in the legislature and cut off the people where the people would no longer have [00:04:00] the power to control the constitution.

This is, this could go down big, and they thought this was gonna be their big champion moment. So, It seems like they’re looking for a culture war issue to try and rally their base to divert attention to what’s ha from what’s happening to issue one, but, but just because you redefine obscenity doesn’t make it right.

Right. Doesn’t make it so,

[00:04:23] Laura: and are they overreaching here? I mean, I know they’ve got their very conservative base and that people all fired up that say that, you know, this is harmful to kids, but. Aren’t the most reasonable people looking at this going, I don’t see this as an equivalent. I mean, are they in danger?

They’re going so far, far over that the people who would normally be Republican but are reasonable, are they gonna say no? I, I don’t want

[00:04:49] Chris: this. Well, I mean, issue one I think is starting to lead people to question it. Look, for Republicans home rule is a central tenet of their belief. Yeah. But with the [00:05:00] Republicans in our legislature, they’re killing home rule.

There’s a bunch of things like that that don’t ring true well with. Conservative and isn’t

[00:05:07] Laura: Republicanism supposed to be all about small government? Like keep your ha, keep your government out of my family. Keep it out of my community. Yeah, and like you were literally telling communities what they’re allowed to have in their libraries

[00:05:21] Chris: issue one is an enormous flashpoint, enormous.

Benchmark for Ohio. I should remind, we haven’t mentioned in a long time. We should. Everybody who’s endorsed issue one, if it goes down, they’re gonna be tagged with it for the rest of time. Mike DeWine, John Houston, Dave Yost, Keith Faber. All of Ohio’s elected Republicans have put their, their reputations on the line by standing behind this terrible effort to throttle the voter.

And we just need to remind people. For the rest of the time, we’ll make sure the voters remember it. They still have a chance to renounce it. A smart politician might look at what’s going on right now and say, you know what? I don’t wanna be tied to [00:06:00] this. This is bad news. And change their mind. Say, you know, I’ve read everything that cleveland.com and the Plain Deal has written about how this thing came about, and I think it’s a bad idea.

That would be wise. It’s today in Ohio. We ran a big story not long ago about dysfunction in the Geauga County Water Department, and that dysfunction has now become criminal charges. Lisa, who was charged in for what?

[00:06:26] Lisa: Yeah, a grand jury indict, a Geauga County Water Department. I it administrator Michael Inger.

On three felony counts of unlawful interest in public contracts and three misdemeanor counts of conflict of interest with contracts. But, uh, Geauga County prosecutor, James Fle says this isn’t over. The investigation is ongoing and more charges might be possible in the future. Again, other people. So, uh, Inger will be arraigned.

Uh, July 26th. This case centers on contracts between the Geauga County Water Department and a private vendor C S J [00:07:00] Technologies and its owner, Joe Camino. And these contracts, the investigation goes back to at least 2000 eights. Uh, Geauga County officials wanted all it and all emails under one umbrella, but the water department fought that for years, and they went with an in-house IT officer, and then they contracted with.

C S J, which has made $328,000 since 2014. So it’s alleged that C S J owner Camino gave cursing her $4,000 for a car lease down payment, and that bids were. Kept under the $30,000 threshold for competitive bids, so they didn’t have to, you know, bid this out. Camino was let go in 2022, but after that, someone paid him in his company $16,000 with a county check, and then a $3,000 check a year later.

So even though he was, you know, they let go of the vendor, this still went on.

[00:07:58] Chris: I, when we ran our big [00:08:00] takeout on the dispute over there, you could tell something was very stinky. This just didn’t make sense. The fight to keep their, their records independent, they were trying to hide things. There were people quoted in the story saying, you know, if you have nothing to hide, why are you working so hard to hide it?

Right? So it’s not a surprise, but man, this is a county that has a history of dysfunctional government. We’ve had the judicial issues, we’ve had previous people getting indicted outta that government. When do you think the voters of Joa County are finally gonna say, I’m fed up with the clowns that are running this place and demand some reform.

This just isn’t acceptable.

[00:08:36] Lisa: Right? And let us not forget that, you know, this. Probably it’s alleged to have led to the shutdown of the McFarland wastewater treatment plant in Bainbridge for three days back in, in, uh, 2022 because, you know, they were, the water department was being notified. Hey, we’re changing your administrative passwords.

You’re coming under our, our umbrella. And then that Texas plant, that treatment plant got shut down two days [00:09:00] later.

[00:09:01] Chris: Yeah, I know. It’s, it’s outta control. After the, the search, after the raid to go and get the records, they let the guy come back into the building. You would think, they would’ve said, you know what?

We need to suspend you now until we figure out what’s what. I mean, who knows what other damage could be going on when he’s back in the building. Uh, and, and it’s interesting that they said this is just the beginning. Mm-hmm. I mean, it really is foreboding that some big stuff is yet to come. You’re listening to today in Ohio.

Courtney, when was the last time Ohio executed somebody and how many people now sit on death row?

[00:09:35] Courtney: Yeah, yesterday marked the five year anniversary since Ohio’s last death row inmate was executed, so July 18th, 2018, and it sounds like there’s a decent chance that this pause on, on the death penalty here in the Buckeye State will continue for a while.

Just in line with broader trends in the us. People are increasingly moving away from using the death penalty [00:10:00] and. Right now there’s 123 inmates sitting on Ohio’s death row. 23 of those are from Cuyahoga County, and most were sent there not too long ago in the mid to, you know, early two thousands. But this five year mark that we hit yesterday, that now means Ohio joins the ranks of states who have either gotten rid of the death penalty completely, or haven’t used it in half a decade.

In most cases, most states have gone even longer without using it.

[00:10:29] Chris: Well, what’s clear is this has to do with Mike DeWine as governor. He, he’s never said it, but most people have deduced that his religious beliefs, the same beliefs that have him as a staunch opponent of abortion, have him as a staunch opponent of capital punishment.

Uh, when he’s asked about it, he almost, it almost is like a, brings a smile to his face, like, yeah, you haven’t seen any, have you? And so I don’t. Think we would have an execution as long as he’s governor. You also have all the issues with method and all of the mess about it. And you [00:11:00] know, plus a lot of people have talked about how expensive it is because of the, the cost of all the appeals.

Uh, it’ll be interesting and the next governor’s race if it becomes a thing. If, if candidates start talking about I’m bringing back the death penalty or if they stay miles from it. But I’m pretty sure we’ll go eight years at least, without an execution in Ohio.

[00:11:22] Courtney: And you know, historically Ohio, at least in the last 50 or so years, has been a pretty prolific executioner.

56 folks were put to death between 1976 and a few years ago. You know, one of the mechanisms that have led to this pause on the death penalty are just delays in, in executing somebody. So we saw that recently with Keith Lamar. He’s a Cleveland guy. He was convicted in 1995 for deaths during a a prison riot.

And just last week, the Ohio Supreme Court delayed his execution for three years. So just kind of moving the bar and pushing into the [00:12:00] future seems to be the practice. But like you said, the drugs involved here are an issue. Pharmaceutical companies have told Ohio if they use their drugs and executions.

They’ll no longer supply ‘em to places like state medical facilities.

[00:12:13] Chris: Okay, you’re listening to today in Ohio. Courtney, back to you do. Cleveland officials have some qualms about a company that wants to run high speed broadband lines all through the city.

[00:12:24] Courtney: There are definitely some questions from City Council.

Yesterday there was this big first time hearing about a proposal from Mayor Justin Bibb to contract with Sci-fi networks, where they would build out fiber lines all across the city. And this is part of BIB’s, kind of two-pronged. Plan for broadband in the future in Cleveland. One is a low cost option that’s, you know, would be accessible for all that Contracts hit a snag in city council.

We haven’t seen movement on it. In the meantime, the sci-fi networks contract would offer much faster speeds for folks. You know, it’s leadership says this is the [00:13:00] future of of the internet. You wanna get in Cleveland and and bring this to your residents. And basically how this would work is sci-fi networks would.

Lay wire throughout the entire city, and then they’d contract with service providers to actually deliver the internet services through sci FI’s networks. However, council has some questions about that. BIB is proposing what could end up being a decades long contract with sci-fi to have these lines in the right of way.

Now this contract would cost Cleveland nothing. The, the low end broadband that it’s looking to bring would cost about 20 million from the city. But Sci-Fi is looking to do this on its own, and the way it makes money is through those contracts with service providers who are actually delivering the internet to, to households and businesses.

[00:13:48] Chris: Yeah, I, I guess my question is with all of the places they’re already working and not. Actually running yet. Why wouldn’t Cleveland phase it? Why wouldn’t they say, look, [00:14:00] let’s start in these three neighborhoods. Let’s see how you do. And then they could start providing services. Why? Why say we go all through the city and then it begins, cuz this is serious damage to infrastructure.

You cut up roads, you dig up right of way, and Cleveland’s a big city. So why not phase it in?

[00:14:21] Courtney: Well, so there are some concerns that that kind of intersect with that line that we heard from council yesterday. So, sci-fi has been working in the United States for the last few years. There’s 40 or so cities they’re involved with, but none have been completed yet.

Their first one’s supposed to go online next month and elsewhere. In, in, in the states. Sci-fi has run into a handful of delays. Now leadership at Sci-Fi told council yesterday that some of those delays had to do with business practices that they’ve since changed in the last three or four years. So, But some of the delays, it sounded like, [00:15:00] had to do with maybe turnover in city staffing.

So if that leads to similar issues in Cleveland, that could be a problem here. Th there’ve also been, been lawsuits and, and pa Part of, part of the initial delays the company leadership told us yesterday was that they didn’t have necessarily, Internet service providers on board on the front end to really let these projects, to let them start breaking ground.

They said they’ve changed their business model and they now try and strike those agreements for the most part on the front end, so there’s a little less risk and they can proceed as normal. And they did tell us yesterday there’s a least major one, one major national internet service provider.

Interested in serving Cleveland and several smaller

[00:15:43] Chris: providers? Yeah, I just, I hope Council continues to do its diligence. It, there was a good moment where I. Mike Polenzi brought up that separately, the count the city is, is considering spending 20 million on Digital Sea to run some lines, and Polenzi [00:16:00] asked, Hey, look, if we got this private company willing to do it for free throughout the whole city, why are we spending 20 million on this other shaky thing?

He didn’t really get a good answer to that.

[00:16:10] Lisa: Well,

[00:16:10] Courtney: you know, yeah. So sci-fi networks, their lowest price point is $65 a month. Digital C is capped at $18 a month, so it makes it much more affordable for a lot of Cleveland folks, is the idea.

[00:16:22] Chris: Okay. You’re listening to Today in Ohio, our latest rethinking childcare story looks at a success story.

How has one couple run a home childcare business for three decades? Laura and man, Gretchen Coda Crowin just keeps cranking out riveting stories that introduce you to things you know nothing

[00:16:43] Laura: about. Yeah, absolutely. These. These folks never take a day off. Not even during Covid, not even after the day after the, the wife and this couple gave birth.

They turned their home into a childcare center with bent off playgrounds, even a little pool with a [00:17:00] lifeguard in the summer. And th that’s their whole backyard. They work 12 hours a day. So this is Marion and Dan Pike. Pie Craft. They’re 63 and 68. They care for 12 kids under five, and they’ve been doing it since 1988.

They have six kids of their own who are now grown. And that’s basically why they started, because Marian couldn’t find childcare that was reliable, dependable, um, at good price point and that she likes, so they opened Rock and Round the clock in North their North Bridgeville neighborhood. Uh, this is just regular hours, even though it says round the clock, they, they.

Tried to do part-time, they tried to be more flexible, they just couldn’t make it work. So you gotta go full-time and commit to this. But it sounds like an ideal place for these kids to go until they go to kindergarten and, but they’re always flexible. So they’re gonna have some school-aged kids going off to kindergarten this year, and then they’re gonna welcome three infants in their home.

So they’ll have to refigure everything, but they are. Sounds like incredibly hardworking people. And Marian has a background in [00:18:00] accounting, which she says is a huge help because she can manage the business part of it, which is really difficult to make, make it meet. Plus they’re working for themselves.

They don’t have to hire a lot of people. And we’ve talked a lot about how staffing is so difficult in the childcare business.

[00:18:16] Chris: The picture of their backyard is hilarious. It’s every kid. Hut and climbing apparatus you can think of. Uh, I mean, they, they really have built something there. The disturbing thing is they, she, she explains mm-hmm.

You need mm-hmm. My accounting background is why we could do this. A lot of people get into it. They don’t look at what they’re spending, and all of a sudden they realize they don’t have any money, and that’s how they have managed all these years. But I think she said in 20 months, 21 months, she’s done, they’re retiring.

What, what? How do you get others to adopt this

[00:18:50] Laura: model? Well, and it’s not like this is an easy job, like what I just described. Never taking a day off, working 12 hours a day, caring for 12 kids under five. That is not an [00:19:00] easy thing to do. You’d have to love it. And her husband was a school teacher in Elyria for years, so obviously this is where their passion is.

I don’t know that that many people have that kind of passion or you’re right, the business background that they can figure out. How to make this all work. She does not take families that are on public subsidy. We’ve talked a little bit about this, but the rate that the government would be providing her is like half of what she charges people, so she can’t even.

Take on those families. So she talks a lot about the business part, we and, and why she can make this work. But she also believes that we should all be supporting childcare, like public schools so that it’s not just like her and her husband trying to do this and working really hard, that there are more opportunities for more people to get into the business and, and more kids can go to childcare and more families, you know, more moms can work.

[00:19:52] Chris: Yeah. The weird fact is, is if they were doing the exact same thing in Elyria, right, they’d get more money in the subsidies. That’s just ridiculous. Poor [00:20:00] people or poor people, no matter where they are, and they should all be getting a similar subsidy. The this series, for anybody that’s been reading it, the, the overwhelming conclusion you can make is, The country would be a lot better off if we subsidized healthcare.

The economy would be better off, parents would be better off. Uh, the kids would be better off. I mean, this is, this is an example yet again of how we can make a difference Yeah. In the lives

[00:20:26] Laura: of the future. And we started this because of the crisis, right. The, the, the. Dust had cleared a little bit from the pandemic and all of these childcare centers had CLO had closed.

People are not working in childcare centers cuz they can get be, you know, better paying jobs at McDonald’s and, and I think this is the moment we can do something. Since 2019, more than 400 home health childcare providers in Ohio have closed just, I mean four years, 400 home childcare providers just since the pandemic.

That’s a huge number.

[00:20:55] Chris: Okay, you’re listening to today in Ohio. Really read that story. Gretchen did a beautiful job telling it. [00:21:00] The photos are illuminating. Ohio State University researchers have discovered a simple way to avoid children handling guns dangerously. Lisa, what is it?

[00:21:10] Lisa: Yeah, this study was published Monday in the JAMA Pediatrics Journal, and it found that showing a 62nd video on gun safety reduces the risk of unsafe behavior with guns.

So in this OSU study, there were 226 kids aged eight to 12, and they were. Paired in familiar pairs. So they were paired with a friend, a sibling, or a cousin. Half of them saw a video of a D P S officer discussing car safety, half saw one on gun safety with the very same officer. Then they were left unsupervised for 20 minutes and a room full of toys and an unlocked cabinet that contained two real but disabled nine millimeter handguns.

Most kids, 96% of the kids found the guns. And there the guns had a device that counted the number of times the trigger was pulled. [00:22:00] So 53% touched the gun, 23% told an adult, and then the kids who saw the gun safety video as opposed to the car safety video were three times more likely to tell an adult, and they held a gun the sh a shorter amount of time, and pulled the trigger fewer times.

[00:22:19] Chris: That’s fascinating, isn’t it? 62nd video and you get through to the kids, right?

[00:22:24] Lisa: And this does contradict a previous study that found that a national rifle, uh, administration safety video was ineffective, but it had a cartoon mascot called Eddie Eagle, so it was not a human authority figure. So they think that that might make a difference as well.

[00:22:40] Chris: I gotta play that video for every kid in Cleveland and America. It might make a difference. Cool story you’re listening to Today in Ohio, the water off the Florida coast is above 90 degrees, which is not fun for swimming. But Breeze Airlines thinks Northeast. Ohioans wanna go to Florida in bigger [00:23:00] numbers.

Courtney, what have they added to their itineraries?

[00:23:04] Courtney: They do think that they, they see some opportunity here. Breeze Airways is adding a nonstop flight from Agron Canton Airport to Fort Myers, Florida. So we’ll see how the demand shakes out, but I will note that these flights don’t start till mid-November, so I assume they’ll probably be, uh, attracting folks in the colder months up here that this flight will run three times a week.

Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays 137 seat. Airbus is what’ll be taking folks both ways. There’s great deals and promotions. Uh, for the first. Like week or so, $60 one-way flight. So check that out if you’re interested. But this does add a new Florida destination and for Akron, Canton, and Breeze Airway Airways, it’s already flying to Orlando, Tampa and West Palm Beach, plus a few others that are outside of Florida.

[00:23:53] Chris: Yeah, I, I, I was being facetious, making fun of the hot temperatures of the water. People in Ohio love to [00:24:00] go to Florida in the wintertime, uh, going in the summer, you just bake and boil and now you can’t even cool off in the ocean. It’s today in Ohio, US Senator j d Vance has been big on culture war items of late Lisa, what legislation did he introduce as his latest measure?

It’s

[00:24:19] Lisa: called the Protect Children’s Innocence Act, and that would make it a Class C federal felony. To provide gender affirming care to minors, and it would be a sentence of 10 to 25 years in prison upon conviction. It also bans taxpayer funding for gender affirming care, occluding coverage through the Affordable Care Act.

It would ban universities from providing instruction on gender. Affirming care. And then non-US citizens who provided care to minors would be ineligible for US visas or admittance into our country. And, uh, in, in a statement, um, Vance said, under no circumstances should [00:25:00] doctors be allowed to perform these gru gruesome.

Irreversible operations on underage children. He went on to thank Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Republican from Georgia, who introduced an identical bill in the house, and he said that she’s leading on this issue, but a statement on the human rights by the human rights campaign said that Vance shouldn’t substitute Ill-informed.

Personal opinion over the consensus of 1.3 million doctors and the vice President of Government Affairs. David Stacy says, this is taking away decision making from informed parents in consult, in consult consultation with medical providers, and it’s another insulting attack designed to appeal to a small extreme voter base.

[00:25:44] Chris: Yeah, the attack on, on trans issues, is it a ridiculous fever pitch right now? It’s just one after another and you start to wonder, it’s clear that this is all about appealing to some fringe base. That this is all meant for Fox News Watchers to, to [00:26:00] get all Harrumph Harrumph and excited about, but you have to wonder if normal people looking at this re.

Ridiculous fever pitch for this stuff aren’t sitting back now and thinking, what, what’s going on with

[00:26:12] Lisa: our country? Yeah, it, it does smack of desperation, but I do wanna point out that, you know, surgical intervention intervention is extremely rare in minors. Most hospitals and clinics that do gender affirming surgery, you have to be 18 or over and usually have to go through some sort of therapy or counseling beforehand.

Right.

[00:26:32] Chris: It’s, it’s, it’s a solution in search of a problem. This isn’t a problem. It, it’s just like the, the idea of athletes and, and how tiny a problem that is, that they’re focusing nonstop rhetoric and press releases on it. It, I just feel like it’s this desperation to keep their base energized. And they’re losing sight completely of the big picture.

I just don’t think there’s a focus by most Americans on these [00:27:00] issues is a, is a big deal. JD Vance started out, you know, trying to seem reasonable, but lately it’s just one culture war after another. Mm-hmm. You’re listening to today in Ohio. Okay. It’s summer, so we have to talk ice cream. Our innovative consumer reporter Sean McDonald, wondered whether he could make ice cream more cheaply than buying it.

Laura, you love ice cream. What did he find? Let me tell

[00:27:25] Laura: you. We eat a lot of ice cream in our house. You mentioned

[00:27:28] Chris: the other day, you’re a big believer in what? Ice cream for breakfast or something? What’d you say? Breakfast for dinner.

[00:27:33] Laura: Oh, ice cream for dinner on vacation. That way. You only have to buy one big meal.

You get a hotel with a free breakfast, you eat a big lunch, and then you eat ice cream for dinner. There’s nothing wrong. But my kids will tell you the last day of vacation, if we’re on a week long vacation, I let them eat ice cream for breakfast. It’s become like a, a tradition. But anyway, we eat a lot of ice cream.

You cannot buy, make it cheaper than you can. Buy it at Aldi, or, I mean, and that’s what Sean came up with, [00:28:00] that you could make some really interesting flavors with an ice cream maker and you might be able to make like the high end type hog Andaz or Ben and Jerry’s cheaper. But like if you’re fine with eating Edie’s or you know Giant Eagle brands, you’re not going to beat those store prices.

I gotta say, I did start making our own whipped cream, but that wasn’t so much. A cost thing. I just felt really bad about the plastic for the environment. And so if you buy the heavy whipping cream, it comes in the carton, which is cardboard, and then I don’t feel like I’m polluting as much, but that is the key ingredient in ice cream.

It’s a base of mixture of dairy, eggs, and sugars wi with that heavy whipping cream, which is not cheap like a tall one, which I’m not gonna tell you how. Big that is cuz I don’t know, it’s more than four

[00:28:44] Chris: bucks. Well, one, when you make your own whipping cream, it’s a hundred percent better than anything you can buy.

So that’s why you do that. Um, two, what, what you’re not addressing here is the quality of the ice cream. There’s a wide, that’s true wide range of quality and ice cream. [00:29:00] If you make your own ice cream and you do it right, You have a much richer ice cream than you might be buying at Aldi’s. So it it, it, it’s one of those things where are you doing this to save money or are you doing this To have gourmet ice cream is terribly bad for you.

It’s full of fat, it’s full of sugar. It’s not something you should eat a lot of. If you’re going to eat it, you want to eat the best. That’s true. And maybe making it is the way to go. I did

[00:29:24] Laura: stop eating that, like half fat, light ice cream cuz that is not worth it. You’re gonna. If you’re gonna eat ice cream, eat the right, the right ice cream, eat the good stuff.

Sean did say, yeah, that this tastes better, but you need to eat it right away. If you wanna keep ice cream in your freezer for a long time, it doesn’t freeze. Well, I guess

[00:29:42] Lisa: I, you can, I

[00:29:44] Chris: don’t know. Yeah, I don’t know. I’ve done it. I, I, not in a long time, but I’ve made ice cream. It, it’s, you can make some interesting flavors for it.

I, we don’t have time cuz I, you know, otherwise I’d ask what kinda ice cream would Barbie eat? But we gotta go.

[00:29:57] Laura: It would be strawberry cause it has to be pink or cotton [00:30:00] candy.

[00:30:00] Chris: That’s gross. Of course you would’ve an answer to that question. That’s it for today. At Ohio. For a Wednesday. Thank you Lisa. Thank you Laura.

Thank you Courtney. Thanks everybody who listens. We’ll be back Thursday.