I Love Ice Cream (Food Cop)

Thursday Night Dinner (Photo credit: AxsDeny)

Last night I reached into our over-crowded freezer and pulled out a pint of Ben & Jerry’s” Phish Food.” It has everything I look for in an ice cream, chocolate (but not dark chocolate) a marshmallow swirl, a caramel swirl and chunks of dark chocolate fish. What more could you possibly want? It’s my go-to flavor for comfort although I have to say it was hard to resist that new coconut flavor they had in the summer. Oh my, I wonder how Phish Food would taste with some coconut in it? In my mind it reminds of a very old flavor that I used to love at Baskin Robbins when I was a kid “German Chocolate Cake” Ben and Jerry, how about it?

If I could choose any job at all I think I would be an ice cream flavor tester. (ARE YOU HIRING BY ANY CHANCE??) For the happiness quotient alone, it makes me smile just to think about it. I’ve forgiven Ben and Jerry for selling out to a big company, let’s face it, I would have done the very same thing. They are still involved, they have every right to enjoy their wealth and scoop what they sow. I love these two guys with a vision and a dream, these are two people I can say have made the world a better place. (And I’m not sucking up because I think I’ll get free ice cream, no one does that anymore.)  I truly like these dudes and I even visited their plant many years ago in Vermont, have a cow tee-shirt to prove it.

My husband likes “Coffee Coffee Buzz Buzz,” but for me coffee is to be sipped slowly in the morning, steaming hot but not eaten with a teaspoon. I have tried his and it has a nice smooth quality but it’s not in my top ten list. See, now that I am writing about their ice cream, I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that even having gained three pounds, I know we will be at their store tonight, waiting in line, asking for a free sample and then ordering. My genius son introduced me to the BEST way to order, because in our family, (except for my husband) rainbow sprinkles reign supreme. You order whatever size you want, with rainbow sprinkles and *THIS IS KEY* tell them that you want the cone in a cup! That way, they are not cheap with the sprinkles (guys: you should know this) as I can tell you they are when you just order a cone. Do you just LOVE THIS?    I know, I do too. Thanks, to my boy Tim for that idea. Everybody? “Thanks, Tim.”

I’m looking forward to dinner, it’s our daughter’s last night home before she leaves for college and she gets to select whatever she wants to eat. She has selected pizza and a cheese calzone with marinara sauce (YES!!!!!!!!) and I am really looking forward to that. Do you get the sense that we are a foodie family? We are.

GASP!!! There’s a PEEP in that photograph, another FAVORITE of mine, (but they have to be yellow marshmallow chicks) how fortunate was I to find a photo like THAT!!  I have written entire blog posts on Peeps. Check them out!

Okay, I’ve told you my favorite ice cream flavor. What’s yours? I’m licking my lips.

Photograph courtesy of the photographer, no rights owned.

An Open Letter To The Fribbles At Friendly’s

Friendly’s Fribble (Photo credit: johnwilliamsphd)

Dear Mr. Maguire,

I want you to know that, we the people, are NOT happy that you are changing your Fribble formula yet again. We love the Fribble as it is. The reason we choose the Fribble IS because it is different from regular milkshakes, we feel it’s slightly healthier because you use ice milk instead of ice cream. That said, are you going to take your uniqueness away, use hard ice cream like all the other stores in the country and make the fabulous Fribble a Frappe?

I must have a procedure done in the hospital in about a month, you couldn’t know this but I asked my husband to stop at Friendly’s on the way home to buy me a Fribble. An original or current Fribble. I DON’T WANT A MILKSHAKE. They are way too heavy and hard to drink, you can’t easily sip them through a straw. My only decision was to have a vanilla Fribble or strawberry Fribble, now I need not make that decision. If I want a milk shake, I can get a number of them closer to my house at various brand name stores whose ice cream, ( yes, sorry) is much better than yours. I don’t think I need to mention names but there are a couple of guys from Vermont,  (Yo Ben, Yo Jerry you dudes rock!), a Coldstone Creamery (want mix- in’s sure pick whatever you want) and MANY frozen yogurt stores, (again, not as fattening as ice cream). Do they compare with the sainted Fribble? Not to me, I am FRIBBLE FAITHFUL.

I’m begging you now to PLEASE review this crazy marketing scheme of yours. People do NOT want more fattening items, they want items that taste fattening but are not worse for our figures. Do you really think this idea is solid? (get it? Solid, ice cream….) I think you are making a huge mistake and I am asking you to reconsider.

If you insist, you could always have your hard ice cream Frappe and have the original Fribble for your brand loyal original fans. What do you think? Please let me know. Go back to grilled cheese, fine, go back to the little hamburgers and french fries but please keep the Fribble and then add a new product if that is what you want. Please think about it. I would be happy to work with you for flavor testing or anything you need. I am the taste of America and I love Fribbles.

Thank you very much.

Laurie, THE ULTIMATE FRIBBLE FAN

Related articles

• the names of all the ice cream places are not my own and are used for entertainment purposes only. that and because I truly love them.
• Friendly’s changes Fribble recipe for a third time as part of broader redesign (bizjournals.com)

What Makes Me Smile

Image via Wikipedia

The name Schweddy Balls (and the SNL skit) by Ben & Jerry’s, their coconut layer cake ice cream (divine), a baby laughing, sunshine after ten straight days of rain. Also, my dog lying on my feet, the sound of my kids having fun, watching the ocean and feeling its power and picking up seashells.

PFAM – Where Is Your Happy Place?

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I don’t know where my “Happy Place” is. I’m not sure I even have one. A fantasy I have is living in a house on the ocean, warm, sunny weather, about 75 degrees, pink lemonade in colorful plastic glasses. Unless I win the lottery, (that’s another happy place) that’s not realistically going to happen. My life is really a collection of special moments that I have had already. My go-to place now is in the past.

Those positive memories in my mind, sometimes hard to get access to, are my happy places. My happy place is watching The Office with my seventeen year old daughter lying next to me, the sound of our laughter co-mingling. Browsing in the supermarket slowly, holding on the cart and looking at every new product is fun. For me, it’s a state of mind. I’m not going to lie and say it always works because there are times when I can’t conjure up a happy place. Those are the times when I curl up in bed, hurting, safely tucked in under the covers, trying to keep my pillow cool and my body warm, my dog snoring beside me. I accept those moments too, afterall, you can’t appreciate the happy places without the unhappy ones.

Creme Brulee ice cream from Ben & Jerry’s, is a happy moment as well as a maple lollipop sent from a friend that I treasured for months before I gave myself permission to lick the amber sweetness. Helping other people makes me feel good, doing a good deed. Just the other day I saw an elderly neighbor looking upset and I helped her out; she was confused and worried about a “missing”  eight year old boy; I drove her around the neighborhood as we tried to find the location of a dawdling boy who hadn’t yet made it to his neighbor’s house for his ride to camp.

Filling my bird feeder after it’s been empty for a while with sunflower seeds so that the beautiful cardinal family and finches will come back makes me happy. I get happier after they find the food when they sing and dance, chirp and flutter and sing their melodious songs to each other. At night, watching fireflies is a happy moment, every time I see a deer I gasp with joy or a gray bunny rabbit hopping across our front yard.

I wish I had a happy place that I could go to easily but I don’t; it would reassure me and help me to feel peaceful and safe. That’s not my world though, it would be simpler if I had one. So, I try different things all the time, looking at old photographs when my children were young, doodling on a notepad, having the perfect peach, listening to my favorite songs and singing out loud, clear, strong and off-key. Those things make me happy, but to be honest, I have to work at it to find them.