January 11, 2024 | Awake & Dreaming

1. It all started back in 1938 with a killer recipe. The original formula for DQ’s soft-serve ice cream was created in 1938—though the first location of Dairy Queen didn’t open until 1940 in Joliette, IL. The shop is still there and is now a city-designated landmark.

2. There’s a story behind the Dairy Queen name. The very first store was dubbed “Dairy Queen” because the man behind its soft-serve, Jack McCullough, said his creation was “a queen among dairy products.”

3. The Blizzard wasn’t invented until 1985. It was so wildly popular that DQ sold 175 million blizzards in that first year alone. We can’t say we’re surprised by this—after all, we did rank the best blizzard flavors.

4. DQ has a special blizzard made for royalty. Dairy Queen’s new Royal Blizzard is loaded with sauces in its center, so it’s similar to Ben and Jerry’s core series pints—except they’re blended with all your favorite mix-ins like Oreo crumbles and cheesecake bites.

5. Dairy Queen often gives away free ice cream. Keep in touch with the brand here at Delish and also on its social media accounts to jump on deals like Free Cone Day and stuff your face with soft-serve at no charge.

6. Its soft-serve is trademarked. Well, sort of. That curly-Q atop your cone or cup is a signature DQ move and it’s part of the company’s trademark look. Plus, DQ’s former chief branding officer Michael Keller, won’t let anyone get their hands on the recipe. “[The formula] is kept in a safe deposit box and there are only a few keys to it,” he told ABC.

7. The iconic Dilly Bar was invented in 1955. The chocolate-covered treat also features that signature curl at its center, which was first introduced to the franchise by Robert Litherland, the co-owner of a store in Moorhead, MN. You can also order it with a cherry or caramel coat.

8. The most popular Blizzard flavor is Oreo. But you probably already guessed that, huh? Because ice cream, cheesecake, and virtually every dessert on the planet is made better with Oreos. Cookies and cream forever.

1. No New Year, please. This isn’t the Soviet Union (anymore).

The first ban on this list has been in force since late 2015. Tajikistan banned New Year — the most important holiday of the Communist era — in schools and universities. Privately, Tajik families are still allowed to celebrate New Year, of course, although there are also restrictions on private celebrations (more on that later) so they would be best advised to do so modestly.

2. No Halloween or Holi parties, please. This isn’t America OR India!

Very few people in Tajikistan celebrate Holi anyway. But the crackdown on on the festival last year followed police detentions of fancy-dress ghouls and vampires marking the more popular holiday of Halloween in 2013 and 2014. It is ironic that in this case police invoked Islam when they broke up the celebration, because, as will become clear, local authorities don’t like that much either. But what holiday do Tajik authorities actually like? The answer to that is simple: Nowruz. Nowruz, which marks the spring equinox, is sufficiently pagan so as not to contribute to growing religiosity in the secular, majority-Muslim country, and also emphasises Tajikistan’s Persian heritage.

3. No birthday parties outside the privacy of your own home. You know you’re not rich enough anyway!

If you are brave enough to celebrate your birthday in a cafe or restaurant, spare some extra cash for the fine. Amirbek Isayev learned this lesson at his own cost when he was fined the equivalent of $600 — a huge sum in Tajikistan — for bringing a tell-tale cake to a pub in Dushanbe. Prosecutors opened their case against Isayev when a photo featuring him and the cake at the pub surfaced on Facebook. Had he been celebrating with a steak, he might have got away with it.

4. No celebrations of school ending, please. Real life is beginning, and that is much, much worse, believe us.

Spoilsports? You bet. School leavers parties — another great Soviet tradition — were banned in 2016. Officials never really explained the ban, but it is possible they had two targets in mind: gift-giving among teachers and students, and drunken leavers’ party mayhem in the country’s capital Dushanbe. Either way, graduation from school is now a much more somber affair.

5. No extravagant weddings

And weddings are much more threadbare, thanks to the ever tightening Law on Functions; the same law under which Amirbek Isayev was prosecuted. The latest amendments to legislation that first came into force in 2007 are the most prescriptive so far as the government continues to urge people to spend less on key life events.

6. No ‘alien’ clothes. Keep it national!

Several Western media outlets reported in September this year that Tajikistan had banned the hijab, although the law that was passed did not mention the hijab by name. Rather it called for protection of traditional, or ‘national’ clothes from their ‘foreign’ competitors. At any rate, life has become harder for hijab-wearing women in recent years, as the government cracks down on forms of dress common in the Middle East and neighbouring Afghanistan. In addition to a ban on the hijab in state educational institutions, there have been bans on the sale of hijabs in certain cities and reports that women wearing hijabs were turned away from state hospitals. Tajik women can still cover their heads, and are often encouraged to do so, but not their chins.