There are certain foods I could surely live without, but ice cream isn’t one of them.  Ice cream is top 5 on my list of food pleasures.  Childhood memory... going into town in the summer with my mom, dad, and sister and stopping at Twisty or Frosty or something like that.  We all ordered a large (maybe it was even an extra-large) vanilla soft-serve ice cream cone dipped in chocolate.  It had to be at least eight inches high off the cone.  After ingesting this massive thing, I always had a stomachache.   My mom would blame it on the ice cream mix not being fresh enough.  Ummm, maybe it was because my 12-year-old body was in fat and sugar shock overload after ingesting a 3,000-plus calorie snack that was meant for Paul Bunyan.   

Who doesn't like ice cream? I can eat it anytime of year; freezing weather doesn't stop an ice cream lover.  My favorite time of year for flavors just ended…pumpkin and eggnog, oh and I almost forgot Snickerdoodle.  Swirls in Del Mar has the best soft-serve and flavors!  Although I like the aforementioned flavors, my tried and true favorite is vanilla with a slight modification; I've expanded that to tart when it comes to soft-serve. Oh, and since I just mentioned soft-serve, I think it's only fair to recognize that soft- serve is the BEST! Soft-serve warning: beware treats that are airy and/or almost melting because they’re not being kept cold enough in the machine.  The ice cream machine needs to be set low!  That's why Swirls is one of my favorite ice cream places. Its ice cream machines are set to Arctic low, low, low.  These low temps definitely produce the “brain freeze” or ”Jamie Truax” as I call them (another blog story), but oh is it de-licous! 

 Hard ice cream, of course, is more economical.  You can get a whole half-gallon for the price of one serving of the soft stuff.  But dear Breyer’s, let's chat about the recommended serving size of a half cup that’s perfectly mounded on the sides of the ice cream containers everywhere.  Are you joking?  Save the ink. Has anyone ever adhered to the half a cup serving size?  Why bother indulging if it's a mere half a cup. It's not worth digging the ice cream scoop out of the drawer and finding a half measuring cup. 

I don't eat ice cream all the time because it really does hold a caloric whopper for fats and sugar and you cannot go “light and healthy” on ice cream…and I've tried. I get sucked into thinking it will taste the same as the real deal with cream and sugar, just like all of you probably have.  Every 6 months or so, I succumb to the idea, and purchase a half gallon of a somewhat “healthy” version of ice cream. There it sits beautifully in my freezer, waiting for me to try it.  I like all the wonderful things it says to me: half the fat, no sugar, only 110 calories, etc. I try a cup or two and then I'm deflated again; it's just not good, plain and simple. This healthy ice cream will continue to sit in my freezer until ice crystals begin to attach and form so massively that I really start to believe it could be perfect for Gregory's science fair project this year—a new glacier in the making.  

I'm going to share with you my recipe for when I'm feeling in-the-mood for some soft-serve, but don't want to go wild and crazy with the real caloric deal:

Happy New Year!
Danielle