Weekend Plans Post: Ice Cream Theory

One of my favorite desserts is a simple bowl of vanilla ice cream, a drizzle of Hershey’s syrup, and a handful of honey roasted peanuts. (I thought it was called a “Tin Roof” but, apparently, that also has marshmallow sauce and uses Spanish peanuts (with skin) instead of honey roasted.)

I mean, you don’t need much more than a bowl of vanilla ice cream and some chocolate sauce and some peanuts. It tastes sweet and salty and nostalgic. It tastes like watching Laverne & Shirley in front of the television. But it’s also just a good, solid dessert. Some insist on something more pinky-extended than Hershey’s syrup but I don’t seem much need to branch out into the Ghirdellis or the Boscos or the U-Bets. The classics are good enough.

But I went out shopping earlier this week and glanced in the Blue Bell case to see if they had some of the Southern Blackberry Cobbler ice cream which is, seriously, the absolute best ice cream in the freakin world. The little flakes of pie crust make a spoonful of the ice cream taste like the best part of eating a bowl of Grangran’s cobbler.

Sadly, they didn’t have what I was looking for. Interestingly, however, they had this:

Dr Pepper Float? Like, vanilla ice cream swirled with Dr Pepper sherbert? Okay fine.

And I brought it home and it tastes like a Dr Pepper ice cream float.

Dang it.

Which had me start to think about the different ice creams you get. Normally (like 5 times out of 6), I pick up just another tub of Tillamook Vanilla Bean. It’s not particularly expensive (regularly on sale, even), has tiny little vanilla flakes, and has a great flavor. With the syrup and the peanuts, you’ve got a dessert fit for a king.

But 1 time out of 6, I go for gilding the lily. Not just the wacky Blue Bell stuff but sometimes Ben & Jerry’s crazier stuff like Chubby Hubby or Tonight Dough (in the late 80s, I read an issue of some magazine where Ben and Jerry were interviewed and they talked about their rock and roll flavors like Cherry Garcia and mentioned “Grape Slick” and I thought that grape-flavored ice cream sounded heavenly but, of course, nothing comes up when you google for that and you just get a bunch of articles talking about why grape ice cream isn’t a thing).

There are also a bunch of candy-bar themed ice creams like Snickers or Twix or Reece’s and those are fun for a scoop here or there (not a tub’s worth of fun, though).

But then I found myself thinking at length about whether the simple ice cream that you doctor yourself is better than the complex pre-doctored stuff… and, yeah, 5 out of 6 times, I want to doctor it myself. But, occasionally, I see something like the Dr Pepper Float ice cream and, dang, it’s really good too.

This weekend, Maribou and I have a date at the movie theater where they bring you hamburgers halfway through. We’re going to watch “Novocaine”. We’ve seen the commercials during wrestling and, hey, an everyman with a condition where he can’t feel pain deals with his crush getting kidnapped? Heck yeah! Sign me up! And even if the movie is awful, well, hey. Hamburger and maybe I’ll get an essay out of it.

Saturday is game night and Sunday is yet another day for chores and errands before getting thrown back into the deep end on Monday morning.

So… what’s on your docket?