Ice cream is a delightful thing and I like having it for breakfast (or lunch or dinner). Because rarely have dessert and if you keep your meals normally balanced and healthy, what could be wrong with setting aside one of them to feed your soul?
While these aren’t necessarily my favorite ice cream flavors, they are the ice cream flavors of my life. My life, as told in ice cream. You know how you can tell when fossils come from based on what stratified rock layer they’re located in? This is like an ice cream layer cake, with the bottom most being the ice cream of my youngest youth and the top layer the scoops I get these days, at FoMu.
It all began… I really have no idea. I definitely can’t remember the first taste of ice cream I ever had, but I remember the treats I used to get at my corner store (which is still going strong, nineteen years after I moved to the neighborhood as a somersaulting two year old. So that would have been those vanilla cups with cold strawberry syrup or chocolate fudge on top. Or those chocolate chip cookie sandwiches with vanilla in the middle. Those were the big ones.
And then at the beach a few minutes’ drive from my house there’s this sublime ice cream shop, Kelly’s Ice Cream (maybe called Kell’s Kreme now?) which we would get after having some crunchy with sand pizza from Bianchi’s. My Dad would always get a root beer float. My Mom would get some thing with strawberries with ice cream in tin foil (?). I don’t remember what. But I would always get a soft serve Chocolate Swirl Cone with Chocolate Jimmies (we’re in New England, they’re JIMMIES, not SPRINKLES) in a Cone. With a cup, because even as a child I had anxiety. But it was focused on dropping my ice cream 😛
You need somewhere to plop that cone down for safe keeping.
And then along came Elementary school when we could buy ice cream (or a host of other desserts) for maybe 50 cents. I really liked those chocolate eclair bars and I would pretend to gnaw on them like a starving lioness (?) like the stick was a bone in the middle of a gazelle’s leg (?). I really pity the people who have to teach children table manners. Other ice cream favorites: The vanilla-fudge push pops and orange creamsicles (which I didn’t have much but I have an acute memory of getting my tongue stuck on one, so I must have tried it at least once).
My favorite Ben and Jerry’s flavors:
Phish Food, Chocolate Fudge Brownie: Phish Food was my jam. Someone needs to make a vegan Phish Food. You know what? Someone needs to make an ice cream with jam.
When I used to take swimming lessons at MIT, Dad and I would stop at world-famous ice cream shop Toscanini’s afterward. They have such amazing and boundary-pushing flavors (Chocolate Sluggo, anyone?). My favorites were the straight-laced Belgian Chocolate and Hydrox Cookie. Also excellent? M&M.
We made ice cream at home for a while, but haven’t recently- i.e., since I went to college. But when we did it was always Cherry Garcia, Cinnamon, Vanilla, Hydrox Cookie/Oreo (see a theme?), and sometimes Rose, which was lovely as part of a summer breakfast.
Now we go to vegan ice cream shop in Allston, called FoMu, which I absolutely worship. My favorite flavor is Foreo (Oreo/Hydrox cookie, I am noting if not consistent). Also excellent: Salted Caramel, Mint Chip, and Peanut Butter Mud Pie.
and And AND (!) we need to address Hoodie Cups. I think we used to get them as a class in middle school as a reward… and they also came with the Bertucci’s children’s meals. Hoodie cups. So bad yet so nostalgic.
I don’t know which I miss more, Hoodie cups or the gelato in Venice. 😛
AGH, forgot those Reese’s Pieces cups. Fuck those were good. Peanut butter. My obsession.
List Mimsy 