Avoid boiling seas, languid animals and madness…
In the northern hemisphere, the dog days of summer are the sultry, hot, sticky days from July to mid August.
We call them the dog days, thanks to the Greeks and Romans. Ancient cultures mapped and named the constellations long before we got here. They associated the dog days with the constellation Canis Major (large dog) and the brightest star in this constellation, Sirius. Sirius is the brightest star in the night sky. It’s so bright in fact that the Romans thought we received heat from it.
Originally, the dog days were the time when Sirius rose just before sunrise and it was thought that the combined heat from the sun and Sirius produced the hottest of days when all sort of terrible things happened (languid animals, boiling seas, madness and hysteria caused by heat). In ancient Egypt, this time marked the flooding of the Nile.
The dog days are in full swing around these parts and luckily for us we have a plan to beat the heat and return us to our senses. The solution? Ice cream, and lots of ideas how to make and top it!
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