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Name: Tace

Monday, March 10, 2008

I Scream.....


I like shock value. It's thrilling, we the people, we like thrilling don't we. Who cares about a walk down the street we want diving behind trash cans, rolling away from the wheels of an oncoming semi and hurtling through the air over grey haired grannies and their walkers as you skid to the cross walk and THEN...cross...against the red light.
Excitement we love it.
But I don't get bacon ice cream. Is that wrong of me? I don't get it and I'm a wee bit heart broken to hear of so many people apparently *getting it*. I think what they need is an ounce of reality up side the head. Bacon is meat. Therefore IT NEVER TOUCHES ICE CREAM.
I don't get this sudden rash..make that rasher (ha ha) of bacon ice cream recipes etc. It's every where, I can't turn around the ice creamy goodness parts of the world wide web with out bumping up against bacon ice cream. It's worse then accidentally opening an email that your relative sent out to every one in their address book that was obviously and graphically intended for their significant other only....Worse than innocently clicking on a web link for a site that seems like it's going to be about striped mittens but it turns out it's people who like to wear striped mittens...and that's all. Hey, what ever blows your bubbles, but it don't blow mine and I don't like the idea of bacon in ice cream.
I'm ok with it touching pancakes (bacon that is) as that love union was made ages ago. But it shouldn't even enter in to the thought of ice cream. Some things are scared. You can make all the jokes about God, your Mother and the President/Prime Minister but you sure as hell don't F*#K around with ice cream.
I mean I don't care if it tastes good, it's wrong. And I'm fully admitting that it might taste good, bacon ice cream *shudddddddders* to some people but I'm sorry it's still wrong.
If I want ice cream that means I'm having a dessert, a sweet treat not an astronaut-ish all in one meal kind of thing.
Hey here's an idea if bacon is so damned great why don't y'all slap some in your shampoo, cause mmm bacon smells good and we want it every where we can get it. Do they make bacon scented personal lubricants? Well apparently they ought to. Bacon flavored baby teething rings? Genius!
And ladies, nothing says romance like a triple layer chocolate wedding cake with copious amounts of bacon sprinkled through out. Why even crisp it up? Why not just leave it all fatty and nasty, so you can get a real good bacon experience. Why sugar coat it and pretend it's something it's not. Let it retain a little slime factor if you really want the bacon experience.
Hey, I like bacon. But we have rules in this household, no hitting, no hissing at our cats and NO PUTTING BACON IN THE FRICKING ICE CREAM!
Have they made a bacon flavored vodka? Go ahead ya bunch of sickos go ahead, whip up your bacon flavored vodkas see if I care. It makes more sense than ice cream I can tell ya that. Maybe, just maybe I could sort of come to an understanding with a bacon flavored vodka but my ice cream is precious to me. Ice cream is a treat, if done right it's a bit of a pricey treat. Pricey compared to the artificially flavored, preservative filled .33 cent candy bars I could get instead at a grocery store check out. Why would I need to add bacon to that?
When I have ice cream I'm not just filling a void in my diet I'm having an experience. I don't eat/gulp ice cream. I don't want to be so dazzled by anything while I'm having it that I mindlessly shovel it in and forget to relish every taste. Are you telling me that if you eat bacon ice cream you're not gonna be constantly going,
"wow, bacon ice cream, I'm eating bacon ice cream. Who'd a thunk it? This taste better than I would have expected. It's funny, I don't feel weird at all."
Clank. The spoon hits the bowl, treat is over and you've haven't truly experienced a oneness with the marvel that is ice cream because you were so damn focused on eating bacon in it and not gagging.
There's a good slogan
"Bacon Ice cream : It doesn't make you gag!"

I'm all about experimentation, I too have heard the siren's call of the kitchen muse who whispers sweetly in your ear. Try a little salt on that chocolate, try a little cayenne on that strawberry...what will happen if you switch white flour and use whole wheat instead........ Usually I'll give the kitchen muse a whirl around the dance floor and try the suggestions, as extreme as a little dried pasilla pepper in a mega chocolate cookie even....but the day she comes slithering up to me slyly suggesting I put smoked pig belly in my luscious homemade ice cream is the day I bitch slap her ass back to muse-ville where she can dang well stay until kingdom come and I sit back here savoring REAL un-tainted ice cream.
I don't mean to sound harsh and unforgiving like a total kitchen bitch who thinks every thing should be done her way.........that's what I am, but I'm trying not to come across that way so my point can be sharped to a fine honed bit that will pierce the veil of infatuation with bacon.
In a sandwich...good....in a pie...maybe..IF it's a potato pie, in a sweet pie, helllll no. In a sandwich, yes, in a cookie.....have you learned nothing??????? NO NO NO NO NO!
Maybe it's because I have such special memories of ice cream. Maybe because when I was a kid we were far from rich and ice cream was reserved for special occasions, birthdays and...ummmm...that's about it for the most part. We did have ice cream at other times and it was like a miracle, ice cream and no body got born-ed on that day that we know? Hallelujah. Non-birthday ice cream tasted ever the more sweeter for it's rarity and surprise. You EXPECT to get ice cream on your little brother's birthday, you DON'T expect to get ice cream on a Thursday night in the middle of May.
Oh poor me, only getting ice cream on birthdays, well there were other occasions like I said the rare Thursday plus I aligned myself early on with fellow ice cream addicts who appreciated a non celebratory cone in the summer as much as I did. I thank my lucky stars I had such an addict in my life who made ice cream an event, the way it ought to be. Buying a 2 liter tub of it to eat, scooping it up with cookies, no dishes or utensils of any kind. Sitting on the side of the road over looking a lazy river. Silence but for the occasional crunch of cookie. And every crunch was an accidental bite cause no one in their right mind eats the cookie spoon on purpose, it literally was the transportation unit to allow ice cream to travel to our mouths with out freezing our fingers. We were at once with the ice cream, we savoured every taste, letting it melt in cool, sweet glory on our young tongues.
What sort of ice cream does one bask in on a lovely grey day on the side of the road with a fellow ice cream addict.......Liverwurst and onion.
A HA!
Did you flinch???
Of course you did, that sounds disgusting doesn't it. It was Neapolitan, a simple and humble flavor that satisfied every kid, as there was something there for every one....apparently though there were some kids who were jonesing for a little bacon to be tossed in the mix as they grew up and created just that.
Maybe that's the problem, they grew up.
Maybe they forgot how special ice cream is.
One time, actually one of the last times I visited my Grandma while she stilled lived in her home she had an ice cream cake. One of those super hard, pre-made sorts that has an eerily good layer of chocolate crumble between the top layer of vanilla ice cream and the bottom layer of chocolate. You hear that? Vanilla ice cream, chocolate crumble, chocolate ice cream. There was no layer of BBQ steak anywheres at all in there. If there had been Grandma would have raised an eyebrow and flung the thing out the kitchen window...ok she has more class than that but I don't. I'd have flung it. Then I'd have cried.
Another time when I was a really young kid my Aunt and Uncle took my brother and I to get an ice cream cone at a local joint. I ordered something creamy white with swirls of pink and big gobs of red in it. I ordered based on what I saw in the tub not the label.
"Are you sure that's what you want?" My Uncle wisely asked.
I was undeterred, it looked marvelous, it looked rich and delicious, a little fruity and oh so decadent I was practically drooling like a mad dog on the display case.
The scooper handed me the cone and I took that first lick and my heart literally broke. I can still remember the pain. It actually hurt to have another bite. I was a half decent kid so I didn't sob and whine for another cone. Nobody we knew was rich so there was no "buy me another cone cause I decided this flavor doesn't suit my palette."
I was stuck, trying to eat this weirdly sour...crap.
I couldn't understand it. What in the hell sort of ice cream did I get? Finally I did what I should have done in the beginning and I read the label.
Strawberry yogurt.
For a kid, whose ice cream cones were much too scare for her liking this was literally the most painful ice cream experience of my life. I ordered YOGURT ice cream. (As an adult I acquired a certain taste for it but it's not ice cream. Who are we kidding, it's tasty as all heck if you get a good brand but it's NOT ice cream)
I will never order frozen yogurt if there's the option of ice cream. That's like choosing a tootsie roll over a homemade fudge brownie. Nothing wrong with a tootsie roll...but it aint no fudge brownie.
By the way before I forget, how about a nice batch of bacon yogurt? Maybe it ought to be bacon strawberry yogurt. Breakfast in a tub. Friendly bacteria for your innards with a dollop of fried bacon in every bite. Oh boy.
If there's one thing I've learned in life so far it's that every one is different. Every one has different tastes. And I've learned mine sure as heck doesn't run to bacon flavored ice cream.
Y'all go ahead and enjoy it, if you really, truly are enjoying it more power to you.
I'll save my bacon for a BLT and I'll have a bowl of sweet homemade chocolate fudge ripple ice cream afterwards. Or maybe I'll have a scoop of rum raisin. Of course it's always hard to choose between cookie dough ice cream and Irish cream liqueur ice cream. There was that peach pie ice cream that was pretty tasty, that and an accompanying scoop of raspberry cheesecake ice cream would be soooo satisfying.....oh shoot I forgot about the pecan praline..hmmm...oh man pecan praline and a double scoop of coffee ice cream with a drizzle of hot fudge sauce and a wee scoop of pure vanilla ice cream on top.
Mmmmmm
but y'all go ahead, have your bacon ice cream.
More of every other kind for me!

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Tuesday, February 5, 2008

FREE Tutorial: How to turn....



STEP ONE: the first requirement for turning 30 is that you must be at least 29 before beginning this process.
If you are unsure of your age then please, let me help you determine if you are about to knock on 30's door and actually have it answered.
  • Do you scowl at clusters of teenagers and wonder if giving the finger is illegal?
  • Do you find yourself backpedaling at high rates of speed away from persons who are so heavily doused in scent they smell like they own stock in a perfume/cologne factory?
  • Do you reach for well aged whiskeys and tequila over sugary candy colored schnapps and gag at the idea of neon green margaritas?
  • Do you avoid going to the theater when it will be full of youngin's?
  • Do you know what calories are and hate them with a passion born in the fiery depths of hell over their DAMNABLE existence?
  • Do you feel like you know the answers to every body else's problems and have to bite your tongue in half to avoid speaking said answers aloud?
  • Do you drink water?
If you answered yes to all of the above then you are probably about to hit 30 and can proceed with the rest of the tutorial.

STEP TWO: The second requirement for turning 30 is at least two kinds of homemade ice cream. Any less is unacceptable and any more isn't fair as I myself only made two.
(salted butter caramel ice cream from a recipe by genius David Lebovitz.)

STEP THREE: Turning 30 is a big deal, it's important that you let loose and go a little wild on this most important day.
Remember that in most countries what ever you do on your 30th birthday is considered legal no matter what it is.....huh?.......WAIT!
This just in, my conscience/legal adviser has asked me to add that actually all the same laws apply to a 30 year old as they do to a 29 year old..............umm......I may have some explaining to do to the kind people at the San Diego Wild Animal Park then. BUT in our own defense we make out a little in every elevator we get on...so.....it's not like we're amateurs here.
(face to face with a lion is a truly wild experience, sure there was an inch of glass between he and I but when he roared...my skin crawled in a deliciously scaredy cat way.)

STEP FOUR: This one is a little trickier, as you need to have at the VERY least 2 strong espresso type drinks on the day celebrating your birth. Preferably iced, with a tiny touch of sweetness and a drop of raw cream. They should be had at such times as to fully experience and enjoy the wonder that is fricking good coffee. It will be up to you to decide if that is in the morning, in the afternoon...one right after the other or spaced apart? There are a lot of variables and you should really start planning this special day weeks in advance so as not to find yourself chugging coffee at any moment just to get it down so you can move on to the next item on your birthday list.

STEP FIVE: The feast. Every 30 year old gets a feast on their birthday. It's a known fact. You may choose up to 86% of what your feast will be.
(My feast consisted of fast easy home fries that I will blog about in the future, homemade tartar sauce with horseradish and pickled jalapeƱos, beer battered cod, GIANT crab legs, mixed lettuce salad and every sauce and condiment I could carry. Please note these TV TRAYS are the bestest things for your dinner AND a movie turning thirty celebration.)

What ever you choose, it could be anything, just be sure it's the sort of meal that makes your husband say things like "Good God, the fridge looks niiiiice." when he's digging in it for ingredients to help cook your fabulous meal extravaganza.

STEP SIX: A good movie and good company.
You will need to rest your feet anyways after a long day of running wild. (see above step three).
(my good company, best husband in the world!!)

The movie should be sufficiently scary that you gasp in shock at least 5 times but not SO scary you are a quivering ball of fear whose hands shake so bad they are nothing but a blur of 30 year old fingers.

STEP SEVEN: This is not so much something that you do as it is something that will just happen. When you turn 30 you will be endowed with special powers. The sort that makes people look at you with shock, awe and respect. It may or may not involve levitating and mind reading, every one is different. If you start shooting lasers out of your eyes though I'd be interested to know as that's the one I wanted to get and I didn't.....aw well, luck of the draw I suppose.

Congratulations, if you have followed these steps carefully and with great reverence then you too are now 30 years old! Welcome fellow Thirty-arian!

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Friday, September 28, 2007

Damn You...

Damn you, Sticky Toffee Pudding Ice Cream....Damn you.....
How can I resist the siren's call of an ice cream flavor that boasts three of my all time favorite words in it's title...
Sticky..oh yeah....Toffee...Mmmmm...Pudding...Damn you.
I wonder if perhaps Haggen Dazs is run by Satan, how else can a gal be lured into a 300 calorie per serving ice cream dessert? The good angel on my shoulder doesn't stand a chance, not when she's being tackled by the devil from my other shoulder. How can one make any logical, adult, mature ice cream decisions when the good angel is being held in submission with the sleeper hold from the bad angel. (That's what I get for watching wrestling when I was a kid. Ammunition for my dark side. Hey don't laugh at least this time it wasn't the Vulcan nerve pinch.)
Ding Ding Ding!
Decision made, and the Devil won. Well no surprise there, and what makes decadent, premium ice cream taste even better? I mean besides getting it on sale, sale stuff always tastes better.
Eating it with a stolen spoon.
Wooooohooooooo, corruption of my moral center is 47% complete.
If you like very sweet ice cream then go away, if you lovvvvvvvve very sweet ice cream and would sell your soul for toffee anything...then may I recommend Sticky Toffee Pudding ice cream by Hogging Daze..er I mean Haagen Dazs.
It's guilt ridden delight in every bite.
Damn you...

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Sunday, June 24, 2007

A Threesome with Ben and Jerry

A quiet weekend threesome with me, Ben and Jerry turned into an orgy of cold creamy lovin....
I try to stay strong against those two and their sinfully delicious ways....but how am I supposed to resist temptation with flavors like....creme brule....Oh mercy me..........
I do my damnedest to ignore their enticing good looks but it always ends up the same.
MMmmmmmmmmmmmm....
Me, Ben and Jerry in an orgy of frozen goodness on the kitchen floor.
Slightly full, slightly abashed and slightly apologetic to my husband who doesn't understand why eating a pint of ice cream has to involve thrashing about like a fish outta water.
It was Creme fricking Brule flavored ice cream peoples......
Times like that I wish I smoked.

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Tuesday, March 6, 2007

My Confession......

I have a terrible confession to make.
Specifically to all me folks and friends back home.
You see...for years (this was the pre-Alan years aka the dark ages) I was seriously anti-mint ice cream. Don't laugh, I'm serious... Mint ice cream was evil, right up there with licorice ice cream (which is still evil) and Satan.
I cringed every time some body walked by slobbering over a neon green ice cream cone. I shuddered at my cousin's insistence that candy cane ice cream not only was NOT evil...but pretty o.k. I screamed silently inside my head for YEARS and YEARS over the injustice of mint ice cream! For an ice cream addict...er...I meant connoisseur like myself, adding mint to ice cream was the cruelest notion I'd ever run across. Taking perfectly lovely, deliciously innocent sweet nectar of the cows and adding...GASP mint to it was so abhorrent I've literally blacked out a few times at the thought...... I suspect this is why I can't remember anything from the seventies.
I thought mint belonged ONLY in toothpaste, the occasional mouthwash and hell....and that essentially the ice cream industry was conning off toothpaste flavored ice cream to it's customers...the fools I thought....
I was sure there was even an elaborate AND evil conspiracy afoot between the dairy industry and the toothpaste industry...shadowy figures pulling the trigger on virgin vanilla ice cream every where. INFESTING said virgin vanilla ice creams with what amounted to toothpaste flavorings..... I'm not sure why they'd be doing this...who can truly understand evil??? It's not my job to explain it anyways, just recognize evil when I see it and give it a hard jab in the left eye with a stick.
Well anyways...that was then...................
People...I have a confession to make.
I eat mint ice cream.
I HAVE mint ice cream IN my freezer even as I write this.
*hangs head in shame*
I've been enjoying mint ice cream for years now...and not a word did I say to the folks back home. How could I face them??? After all my protests, my loud obnoxious derisive comments over mint ice cream eaters. My many many many tears shed over uninformed friend's purchases of mint ice cream.
After all of that I NOW eat MINT ice cream. ME!?!
It wasn't a gradual change either...I didn't become addicted to toothpaste or anything. It just happened one day.....I looked deep in to the happy blue eyes of my husband as he sucked down a mint chocolate chip shake (trying to reconcile the idea that the love of my life was literally ingesting evil) and I saw the happiness there and thought....."Hey, I want some of that"
The happiness.... AND the mint chocolate chip shake.....
and you know what? It was gooooooooooooooooooooood.
Perhaps the idea of it being so wrong, so forbidden and evil so many years made the mint shake ever the more sweeter. What ever the reason I was hooked.
Mint..is o.k.
Strike that one off your list of evil things!
So to recap, mint good, me happy. Conscience clear.
p.s. NEON green mint ice cream is STILL evil only because of the dye not the mint.
p.p.s. Now I don't need to hide that little green plant I've been growing if the folks back home ever come down for a visit!

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