Cherry Garcia

We are back to our regular blog day of FRIDAY! This weeks flavor was a request from my cousin Kathy from East Providence, Rhode Island. I was fortunate enough to have met the Moniz family last month on my East Coast vacation. My cousin Taylor (Kathy’s son) introduced me to Hot Wieners and Kathy has now introduced me to Cherry Garcia.

Cherry Garcia Verdict:

This week I went in with low expectations because I am not a fan of maraschino cherries. And another reason why I started with low expectations was because the last two weeks flavors were just not up to par. And honestly, when I get comments like, “It’s the best!” I tend to not believe it anymore. Yes, “It’s the best!” is way less extreme as, “I would leave my husband for this flavor” from Michelle, but I just couldn’t grasp the idea of this flavor.

The one thing about having no expectations is that you are not left disappointed. I just opened this carton and took a deep breathe before taking my first bite. The first words out of my mouth were, “This is refreshing”. The combination of the cherry chunks and the chocolate chunks were just PERFECT. When you first bite into this ice cream it is just like AWWWW. My biggest issue, and yes I have a lot, was that distinctive flavor that I oh so love of the maraschino cherry. I NEVER eat the cherries on top of banana splits, if they happen to get into alcoholic beverage and DEFINITELY not out of the jar. I sadly went into this today with all the hopes of hating this flavor. Not going to lie, acted like a 5 year-old who was having broccoli for the first time. After having my portion-sized scoop of ice cream I wanted seconds. Did I go back? No. But it honestly crossed my mind to just grab my spoon, the carton and just go to town. Lesson learned this week; you truly can’t judge an ice cream by its carton.

I can see why Kathy enjoys this flavor so much now. I imagine Kathy eating her ice cream on the couch zoning out to a tropical beach somewhere. The only person that I am not sure that is on that island is her husband Dave. This flavor finally brought hope back to me with this experiment. Thank you, Kathy.

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Late Night Snack

This week I decided to mix it up and do the tasting on a Thursday. Ok, so I didn’t mix it up on purpose. I did it because I do it at work and my co-workers enjoy the journey with me and they will be gone tomorrow. And I know eating ice cream alone is not like drinking alone, but I just couldn’t do it. So this flavor was recommended to me from my friend Jeanette. She has raved about it before so I thought, she knows the type of guys I like, the food I will and will not eat and what I like to drink, she must now what kind of ice cream I will enjoy too.

Late Night Snack Verdict:

After last weeks debacle of having such high hopes for a flavor I decided not to get so crazy over flavors anymore. Thanks Michelle you have ruined the excitement for me. But don’t think I am letting you off the hook for my plane ticket at Thanksgiving. I may forgive you, but I won’t forget what was already promised to me.

So as I was reading the description I was like….YES…this is going to be good. I like the mix of Salty & Sweet just like I like the mix of Jack & Coke. Then I read chip clusters and I thought, like potato chips? So here I am about to eat this thing they call a chip cluster and I scoop it up and just go for it. I should note that I have texture issues when it comes to food and can’t eat certain foods that I deem as texturally damaging. So I bit into this cluster and all my childhood fears came rushing back to me like it was the first time I ever ate raisins. It was salty (guys get your thoughts OUT of the gutter), is was soggy and just tasted like a stale chip. And once I hit that wall it was over, I just couldn’t wrap my head around the idea that someone thought this salty soggy cluster was a good idea. I say we petition to have the cluster removed from the flavor and all would be well in the world. I am going to call the cluster the appendix of this flavor because it’s just sitting there waiting to burst. And once it bursts we all know you then need to be rushed to the hospital, put in emergency surgery to have it removed then you need to heal. Well I need to heal from the pains that all came back to me from when I was a child and raisins, this is not a good feeling. But if you remove the clusters and just keep the remaining flavors it’s a grand slam.

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Karamel Sutra

So this week kind of snuck up on me and before I knew it, it was Friday again. I again went to the same store, same time with the same routine. But the only difference was the flavor of ice cream had already been chosen. A few days ago I got a comment on Facebook from my cousin Michelle in Rhode Island; “So I tried the "Karamel Sutra" yesterday....I couldnt wait for you to get to it anymore! Let's just say that I would leave Scott Lewis & marry it if I could....SOOO GOOD!!!! :)”

After reading this post I had one BIG concern…Her current husband Scott, the one she would leave for Karamel Sutra, told me while I was there in June that if Michelle didn’t have her regular freak out that she had around the holidays for the BBQ she had in my honor, he would fly me out for all the holidays. Well I must have had some good karma, because she was calm, collective and didn’t burn the house down. And me spiking her drink with some Jack probably didn’t hurt either. So thank God she can’t leave Scott for this ice cream, because I will be there for Thanksgiving when he buys my ticket. And even though Facebook had technical difficulties when I checked into the Ben & Jerry’s plant for our tour, and some how it didn’t include him in the check in, he still likes me.

Karamel Sutra Verdict:

To be honest, I had high hopes for this flavor. When I first opened the carton, which I had to pry apart because of the caramel, it looked promising. I first looked at it and thought out loud to my friend Veronica, where do I start? It was split down the middle, chocolate on one side, vanilla on the other with a funnel of caramel shot right down the middle. It was the perfect storm of chocolate, vanilla and caramel…well the perfect storms sometimes are not so perfect with a closer inspection. It’s hard to explain how I felt about this flavor. It was like a threesome that looked great from the outskirts, but when you put them all in the sack together, they just didn’t know how to function with one another. The chocolate over powered the vanilla, with is flavor and the surprise of chocolate chunks in the middle. I love chocolate, but it was OVER KILL. Here I go only taking about the chocolate and vanilla I nearly forgot about the caramel. Easiest way to explain the caramel, some are just meant to have threesomes and caramel is one of them with this combination. I am sorry caramel, but you were totally out of place.

Thankfully Michelle can pick a better husband then ice cream flavor. See you guys in November. I will send you my mailing address so you can have the airline ticket sent directly to me.

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Willie Nelson's Country Peach Cobbler

Well, there is no better time to start this adventure then on a FRIDAY. I decided that I was going to stop at the grocery store on my way to work to pick my first flavor. But first let me tell you how my Friday’s go down. Every Friday I go to my dads work and have coffee with him before I start my day. Here is the problem, how to keep the ice cream frozen? So I called my dad to make sure he had a freezer….SCORE!

I walked into the store around 7:40am and found my way, naturally mind you, to the ice cream isle. So there I am, standing in front of the Ben & Jerry’s section and I took a look up and down the isle and realized that I am the only fool standing in the ice cream isle that early in the morning. It felt so good, I didn’t have any annoying people/kids in my zone as I was trying to decide on which flavor to embark on.
So as I was in my trance I realized that I had no clue where to start…logically I would do the list alphabetically because I am neurotic that way. But all off a sudden this face appeared to me, he looked like Jesus and I knew that was the flavor. As I got closer his face became more clear and Jesus turned into Willie Nelson…. it was a sign from above. How could I not start this journey with any other American Icon then Willie Nelson himself?

Willie Nelson’s Country Peach Cobbler Verdict:

My biggest concern was the whole idea that you have cobbler with ice cream, usually warm while the ice cream melts down the sides. Now that the cobbler and ice cream were mixed I was afraid the flavor and enjoyment would be gone. I was W-R-O-N-G! Oh my, I was completely shocked when I had the creamy peachy flavor burst in my mouth. One of my favorite parts is the crust crumble, and miraculously I can taste what my taste buds are telling me are the crumbles. It’s so light and refreshing, and on a hot summer day like today it was great.

I knew Willie wouldn’t let me down.

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