Speed Bumps in My Ice Cream

Another ice cream post? Is he mad? No. Is he crazy? Yes. But that's not why I'm writing about ice cream again. On the eve of departing from home to medical school, I had to visit the one food place that I knew I would truly miss. The one foodery that I honestly don't know how I will live without. I have nightmares, cold sweats, and uncontrollable sporadic shivers when I imagine a world without it. I am blinded by fear and incapacitated with trembling as I think that I may never again encounter the ice cream of unsurpassable greatness that is Hoffman's (which is all absolute, made-up rubbish because I would probably travel across half the country at least twice a year for my ice cream fix from this place).


Indeed, even on a day of torrential downpours, blinding lightning, and ear-wrenching thunder, this trip of mournful departure had to be made.

The dude scooping with a bit of an airhead (there was an unrequested spoonful of cookie dough ice cream in between my Oreo and Fudge Mint Cookie flavors), but as the final product fully looked like it belonged on the cover of the Candyland board game, I found it none too difficult to forgive.

On a serious note, I find myself once again needing to speak about flavor selection. In my last ice cream post I touched on flavor pairing, something I believe many neglect.  There is an additional factor, however, that ought to affect flavor choice and needs to be considered: cup or cone.

While I am traditionally a fan of the cup for a couple of reasons:
1. It is usually easier for the scooper to give you more ice cream. With a cone you run the risk of crushing the cone as the ice cream is pressed down. Making the scooper's life easier equals more ice cream.
2. Many times the bottom of the cone is not filled with ice cream (especially when you're dealing with hard ice cream) again because of the risk of crushing the cone with pressing down the ice cream. And, what I do NOT want for my ice cream godbite is a big bite of cone with no ice cream (and eating the cone from bottom up is such a class-less way to eat it).
3. Companies frequently put little paper wrappers around the handle of the cone (dumbest idea ever) and not only is the paper commonly difficult to take off but glue residue is also more often than not left behind (can you say "unappetizing?" - cone glue, now an important part of a healthy and balanced diet)

I am not, however, a hard and fast no-cone proponent. I'm just selective.

Regardless, I do suggest some thought enter into your flavor decision once the choice of cup or cone is made. It all has to do with eating technique.

With a cone, the primary tool of consumption is the tongue.  Like a land-mover shifting mountains of earth, the tongue journeys in ceaseless revolutions removing ice cream from the cone.  NEVER should any teeth ever be involved!!! If there are, you're eating it wrong (yes, it is possible to eat wrong).

So, if the ice cream has huge chunks of chocolate chips or whatever other add-ins you choose, this will impede the tongues smooth glide around the cone (think hitting speed bumps in a parking lot while traveling at 50 miles per hour). Not a fun experience.

With a cup and spoon, those speed bumps (don't call them "humps." i've seen that and it sounds weird) don't exist. It's like Superman built a steamroller and ran right over them. poof. gone.

So choose your flavors wisely.

One last thing of the subject of ice cream pairing, I recently heard tell of a tea and frozen yogurt (i'm not a fan of frozen yogurt and i don't consider it anywhere near equal to ice cream) joint opening up near my home in NJ. Think about it. Tea. Frozen yogurt. tea. frozen yogurt. Doesn't that just strike you as wrong? I'm sorry, when I'm sitting down to a ginormous bowl of chocolate moose tracks ice cream I'm not thinking, "Oh what I wouldn't give right now for a big ol' cup of steaming green tea." Who thunk up that crazy idea? If only I could make millions of dollars by not investing in a company, I'd be rich off of that one. I give them a month before they close the doors on that brilliant idea.

The Mish-Mash Flavor Dash

So brother is planning on conquering his first marathon this coming November by hitting up the Philly marathon. But, training can be hard and super brutal particularly on those "long run" days. As miles add up, the legs plod, the back stoops, and hills look like mountains. Then, blindly and without warning, the body feels the first touch of cold, hard clay and  *WHAM*... flat on your behind, staring up through a starry daze you gaze upon the insurmountably tall, brick and mortar barricade in front of you. Congratulations, you've met... The Wall.

Enter gel shot doohickey. I have it from a good source that Logan swears the resulting feeling is what he imagines being on drugs must be like. Sweet. Now we'll have kids addicted to energy gels.

What I'd rather have stuffed in my back pocket for a much needed energy punch is a slice of this puppy.

 It also sure beats those chalky, gag-inducing recovery shakes. Really. Try it some time.

The cake is pretty much a taste marathon in and of itself - or perhaps an Ironman triathlon through flavortown.  Chocolate cake flavored with honey, coffee, and vanilla and almond extracts, almond creme filling in the middle, apricot preserves on top, and a rum-bittersweet chocolate ganache icing.

It was my post bike ride pick-me-up, and it was seriously good.

Also, in the course of eating it, I think I  discovered that flavor is the 5th dimension.

The only problem is that there are SOoooooooooo many flavors and they're sooooooo far away from each other... relatively speaking. So for a godbite that would include the almond creme, apricot preserves, rum-bittersweet chocolate ganache, and chocolate cake without requiring a mouth funnel, a little flavor shuffling was required.

Yup yup.

Now go run a marathon.

Sandwich-craft

Ever get the food blahs? You know, when you find yourself eating the same thing over and over again day in and day out. When no matter what you eat, it all tastes the same. When after you finish chewing it only feels like your mouth was moving up and down over a cloth gag because your stomach is full but there's no taste left over from the food in your mouth. (this intro has the promising beginnings of a solid infomercial, but I'll press on) When you're like, "Yay! It's din-din time! I think I'll have....the same thing as yesterday."

I was there - bored so dull with my mind molding with the rotten, fly-eaten thought of consuming another sandwich. So what did I do? I treated my problem like a fully fledged homeopathic quack. I ate another sandwich. Like treats like as they say. Though I did it without the whole "potentization" via the super serial dilutions they so love. (i don't know how i'd dilute a sandwich. that'd be gross. pureed and diluted salami on rye anyone? reminds me of hospital food).

But before I arrived as this brilliant solution (get it? dilution....solution.....baDUM TISH), my crazed mind came up with the fantastic idea of creating my own mint extract.  The things that happen when you love science and you stare at an ingredients label so long you begin to think, "Hey! I might be able to make this by extraction with alcohol and then distillation!!"

I've talked about awesome sandwiches before like the FatSandwich, Chicken Parm and this egg monster, but this sandwich from Rosario's Deli in Freehold, NJ is my ABSOLUTELY favorite sandwich ever.

I don't even know what it's officially called.  I just point to it and say, "I'd like the eggplant sandwich."  That's it.

But before it looks like that...

...it looks like this...

...and then this.

Really nothing special.  Other than the smell (which is awesome) and some solid ingredients this cold, plastic-wrapped dinger of a sandwich may as well be Dream #8 in the Nightmare of Food Blahs. But I help it realize its full potential.

Enter the Chamber of Transformation. It's a magical little box that things go into and mysteriously come out 1,000 times better. So I set it on broil and let it do its thing.

One issue.  There are two halves (duh.) though i sometimes wish there were three. But that's not the issue.

"So what's the issue?" you ask.  "Just stick the sandwich in that ol' magic box, wait for the cheese to reach the perfect bubbly lava melt and for the bread to have that crisply browned crunchy crust (a result of my favorite reaction of all time) and then pull it out."

godbite problem:

The better half is eaten last. Because it's eaten last it cools and can become soggy and cold again.

Take a look at my awesome Awesomeness vs. Time graph of awesomeness.

As I am a fan of eating up the curve rather than eating down the curve, the solution, as suggested by the graph, is to take the 1st half of the sandwich out at a point halfway up the curve timing it such that you finish it and are ready for the second half when it is at the max point and when....

 ...it looks like this...

...creating this.

The best sandwich I've ever had: eggplant, toasted bun, melted mozzarella, basil, roasted red pepper and a tiny bit of olive oil with the bread catching the juices pressed out from each bite.

Nothing short of magical.

Too Good to be True

There are some things in life you just don't expect.  Like finding the best pizza you ever did eat at a little hole-in-the-wall, unsuspecting pizzeria called Vinnie's or Luigi's smooshed between and dwarfed by two bookending buildings (the aura is even better if you have to walk down 4 1/2 steps to the front entrance creating a slightly cavernous I'm below ground, but really I'm not; this could be claustrophobic but it's actually kinda cozy type feel to the place).  Or like when you finally stop at a seedy-looking, gaudily aluminum-paneled diner decorated with, among many things, a faux 70s-era jukebox.  Even though you've driven by a million times, you stop this time because it's the only place open at 1am and you finally discover they serve the biggest, fluffiest buttermilk pancakes you've ever set eyes on.

Then there are some things that are just too good to be true.  Like those online pop-up ads telling you that you're the site's 10,000th visitor and as such they'd like to give you $10,000 (if you would just give them your social security and credit card numbers); or that you've been chosen to fill out a quick survey for a free iPad (and then you end up having to sign away your life by filling out a minimum of 5 offers from advertisers that will hunt you down and relentlessly torture you if you ever decide to cancel your subscriptions); or Prince Khemczaerasikkii's illustrious aunt died and left him boodles of money that he doesn't know what to do with and wants your help getting it into the US and all he needs is your bank account number to transfer it and viola you are rewarded with 50% of his inheritance.

I had a similar experience.  Sort of.  But not as illegal.  It was more like finding Luigi's (i've never actually found Luigi's, but I've always thought it would be nice if I did).

Take a look.  Careful like.

I was down apartment shopping in Charlottesville for med school.  Found a nice place but had some time to kill before the person showing the place turned up.  So what better to do than scout out the communal laundry room.  Sounds like fun, right?  No, I guess not.  But I was bored. 

And right there, smack in the grungy, old corner looking seedy, dilapidated and right out of the 70s sat this old Pepsi vending machine. 

I'm not much a fan of soda, but I love playing this game called If I were going to get something, what would I get? (it's very similar to the highway game played on road trips known by the equally descriptive name of If I were going to stop at this rest stop, where would I go at the food court? it's super fun.  try changing up tradition and slip it in between the 155th and 156th time you play the alphabet game).  And naturally, when playing If I were going to get something, what would I get?, you want to keep it as realistic as possible so you have to look at how much it'll cost you (hint hint look at the picture again).

And that's when I got the Prince Khemczaerasikkii email-shudder down my spine. $0.50 for a soda??! Really?  Was I actually going to be taken in by Prince Khemczaerasikkii's broken English email suspiciously addressed to "Dear United States Residing Recipient"? I half expected this to happen.  But, it was one of those things where even if you don't want the soda, you have to try it just to see if it actually works.  And it did. Made my day in fact.  I talked about it for the next 8 hours.  Prince-man had actually transferred the money to my account.  Booyah!

Let's go on a brief tangent shall we?  What does "Dr. Pepper is made with 23 flavors" mean?  I certainly can't taste 23 different flavors all at once?  In fact, I just get one, general taste (albeit with multiple layers) in my mouth that I call Dr. Pepper.  And what does "flavor" even mean?  Are there 23 different flavor-producing compounds that each individually activate a taste receptor on my tongue?  In that case, I ask, "Why only 23? That's pitiful."  Don't most foods have multiple flavor elements?  Or, does this make it better than another product that just has 15 so-called "flavors"?

Come on Dr. Pepper guy.  And, am I really supposed to trust a guy who named it after the father of the girl he wanted to marry?  This qualifies the man as a super smooth, fast-talking salesman - a professional at marketing as well.  He's basically dancing on your brainwaves with that 23 flavor tagline.  Oh well, it may not be Luigi's or buttermilk pancakes, but I can't argue with 50 cents.

An Ice Cream Dream

So I've been Henry David Thoreau-ing out in the pastures of dinners, the wilderness of desserts (see what I did there? Desserts is almost like deserts and a desert is a wilderness...eh, eh?), and in the vast expanse of various edibles.  I needed some one-on-one time with my food.  A time to reconnect and explore.  To search my feelings and uncover my deep desires.  To become curious.  To sweep away the dust and grim of commercially produced, eternally preserved, inside-spackling slime of modern fast food-ist philosophy.  And I can think of no more liberating nor uplifting food to celebrate my success than the high queen of all dairy products, ice cream. 

Eating ice cream like nobody's business runs in the family - through my mom's side actually.  It is most certainly an inherited trait (it's passed from parent to offspring via the Cream Gene).  In fact, sometimes I think my brothers and I are so good at it that it's kinda like a superpower.  Like the Incredibiles, except they eat ice cream.  Almost as if Mr. and Mrs. Ice Cream got together and had little ice cream-eating monsters, known as the Dairy Demons - but good...demons.
 
I know many superheros say their great power is also their greatest curse, but I'm really not seeing any downsides right now.  So if you're ever attacked by an ice cream goblin from the arctic, you go ahead and take a rusty, old spotlight from some slick-dealing, used-car parking lot and shine a great big ice cream come right up there into the night sky.  I'll be there.

Photo Courtesy of Alison Dunn

But, ice cream is also serious business.  Logan right there is totally engaged with his ice cream cone.  Fully focused and completely concentrated.

He and I I like to think of ourselves as ice cream critics. Not snobs.  You can't be a snob about ice cream.  It's too legit to be a snob about.  But critics, yes.  It actually doesn't take much to make us happy either.  We're lax critics - but thoughtful ones.  We've got only two rules.  1) Give us good ice cream - a fairly broad rule and the details vary by flavor.  A more in depth, flavor-specific discussion requires its own post (plus think of how many flavor specific posts that frees me up to do!).  2) Give us lots of ice cream.

See? Easy-peasy.

Photo Courtesy of Alison Dunn

Even if we get both of those two things, turning down the offer to finish off another person's ice cream violates Dairy Demon Code, rule #24.

Photo Courtesy of Alison Dunn

We've even got a method.  Simple but critical.  The head-tilt.  Turn your head rather than the ice cream because turning the ice cream risks it falling right off the cone.  It may not be useful crying over spilled milk, but dropped ice cream is a whole different ballgame.

Secondly, the head-tilt makes you lick around the cone.  Licking upwards chances that you might push the ice cream right off the cone while if you lick downwards (I honestly don't know how that would be achieved without turning the cone upside down - in which case there's no hope for you - or without maintaining an extremely uncomfortable position) the ice cream that gathers at the tip of your tongue - like snow before a plow - will succumb this crazy thing called gravity which you must never have heard about if you're actually using this method.

Eric, Logan, Me, Meryl.
Photo Courtesy of Alison Dunn

Now that the basics are out of the way...

On the way out to Clarion, PA  to hang at Casey's house after graduation, Alison informed us about The Creamery at Penn St.  After her description, we didn't question, we just knew we were stopping there.  To psych ourselves up, we read their list of flavors from their website while in the car.  We couldn't handle it.

The Creamery is truly the gargantuan cone mecca for ice cream fanatics everywhere.  Though they only permit a single flavor per cone, their enormous size and miniature price are more than enough for me to overlook this smallest of offenses.  And no, you can't get a small cone.  They only offer one size.  Don't complain, just turn in into your lunch, or dinner, and smile.

It was so good we stopped there twice.  Yes, really.  Once on the outbound trip and once on the way back.

Can't take anymore ice cream talk?  Shame on you.  But, I'm almost done.  This is from my favorite ice cream shop in New Jersey.  Hoffman's Ice Cream has three locations on the Jersey Shore. So why did I get a cup while at Penn St. I got a cone?  Do I prefer one to the other?  Yes, but it's all about knowing your ice cream.  At The Creamery you get more ice cream getting a cone rather than a cup.  At Hoffman's you get more ice cream in an cup rather than a cone.  (there's street-smarts and then there's ice cream-smarts).

 So patriotic with the flag in the background.

Pairing ice cream flavors like pairing the proper wine with a meal.  It may not ruin the meal, but if you do it right, it can make all the difference.  My flavors: Chocolate Explosion (chocolate ice cream with brownie bits and fudge swirls) and Fudge Mint Cookie (the flavor that won best flavor in NJ one year and is basically Cookies 'n Cream but with mint ice cream and fudge swirls).  Both excellence flavors and an exceptional pairing.

As is my practice with any variation of Cookies 'n Cream, my last bite always contains a large cookie piece.  Examine, isolate, and attack.  I'm an ice cream super hero.