I LOVE ICE CREAM. Everyone knows it, I’m not ashamed. If there was only one food I could eat, it would be ice cream. Certainly, my readers know I’m an ice cream freak, aficionado, crazy woman – any and all descriptive words apply. Summer is my time to indulge in ice cream at almost any time of the day. Seriously, seriously…I think I would show up at Day’s or Nagles when they opened up and have ice cream for breakfast. What’s holding me back? Well I already need to lose weight so every time I go for ice cream I have to deal with the angel on my right shoulder and the devil on my left and lately I noticed I’m holding my ice cream cones as if I were a southpaw! And then again, the food police are in residence every couple of days and that really curtails my ability to succumb.
Besides my two favorite Ocean Grove ice cream shops, I also stop now and then at the Cone Zone. Now there’s a place that knows how to make an ice cream cone. It is two huge scoops precariously perched one on top of other. I stopped there two days ago on my way into town from NYC. Can you imagine the inner conversation I had with myself from Exit 11 on the NJ Turnpike till I actually arrived in Neptune? I ran through a list of possible flavors and plausible reasons of justification about stopping and eating ice cream at 1pm. After much back and forth, I think the heat and humidity were the deciding factor, why not ice cream?
And that brings me to my latest taste experimentation. For the past two years I don’t think I ate any flavor other than Peanut Butter Moose Tracks, and hey, it is STILL right up there in the top 3. However, this year has been the year of the new flavor and flavor combination. My stop at the Cone Zone which blessedly had no line (not like the two ice cream empires in OG) allowed me to look over the invitingly cold and colorful offerings. I had a cone with two scoops and I almost always get two different flavors because you know life is short and you never know when you’re going to get that next ice cream cone!
1. Banana Caramel Chocolate Chip: Looking at the barrel through the glass, I could see thin lines of caramel swirled throughout the not-too-pale and not-too-bright (yuk artificial) yellow ice cream which was spotted with dark chocolate chips. This one will be good and I can count it as a serving of fruit in today’s food pyramid.
2. Java Jolt: What could be better for a mid-afternoon pick-me-up than a bit of caffeine and in such a delightful form? Cold, creamy, vanilla ice cream liberally laced with coffee and wide ribbons of chocolate fudge running through it? Nothing that I could think of so I had one scoop of this and one scoop of the Banana Caramel Chocolate Chip.
3. Mission Fig: Spending time in the Garden State is hardly an area of deprivation from the best fruit and vegetables, so not sure why this year, fruit ice creams are among my favorites. But they are and this delicacy is to be had at Day’s . Mission Fig has a delightful, delicate flavor. It must have a vanilla ice cream base but it is not really white, and bits of fig and the distinctive taste and flavor of the fig puree throughout the ice cream is remarkable.
4. Chocolate Midnight Cookie: For the past many years, since the advent of Cookie Dough ice cream, makers have been tweaking and twisting that concept to myriad creations. This one is a WINNER! Even Peter orders it every time. Deep dark rich-looking chocolate ice cream with very, very dark crumbs and pieces of very dark, well Midnight actually cookie mixed in. YUMMY!
5. Blueberries and Cream: I had to taste test this one first because you know how artificial some fruit-flavored ice creams ; this one just sang of wild Maine blueberries. Chunks of the fruit in vanilla ice cream and if you closed your eyes, you might think you were in Ogunquit.
Well I started this blog late last night, most likely out of severe disappointment because I literally drove to both Day’s and Nagle’s TWICE during the course of the evening while I was out doing a few errands and BOTH times BOTH places had such long lines and I was so hot and tired that I couldn’t imagine standing around for 30 minutes to get some ice cream to take home – by this time it was already 8:30pm and I hadn’t even started making my gazpacho – oh yes that again! Now it’s 10:00am and I swear if I write one more sentence about ice cream, I am out the door and on my way!!!!
OR maybe this one?
Related articles
- Tasty Thursday: Vanilla Ice Cream Base (ctworkingmoms.com)
- Hard-Packed Ice Cream Or Soft-Serve? (theawl.com)
- Ice Cream Shop Releases Pair of Creepy Ads You Must See (mashable.com)
Bill Ding and his band of clowns are the security patrol for this blog site. He is a favorite toy from the 50*s. By the way sometimes a blog is just an ego-maniacal stream of conscience.
Pbenjay's Blog 
As a fellow ice cream afficionada from Boston, reading your blog makes me want to hi-tail it to the Garden State this minute! I love how adventurous you are! (I, for one, have eaten the same flavor for too many years to admit…) If you ever come my way, try JP Licks, which is the in-town favorite, a small shop that began in my neighborhood of Jamaica Plain (ergo, JP), and has now spread into other parts of Boston and even the suburbs OR if you are a serious traveler and happen to visit Walden Pond in Concord, aside from taking in some historical Boston touring, you can add an extra little ride through the country to Kimball Farms in Carlisle, which has the BESTEST ice cream I have ever tasted! A swim in Walden coupled with the ice cream is a guilt equalizer… Happy slurping!
Mindy (Gail’s non-bio sis)
Hi Mindy, I was thinking of you when I was writing it because I know from Gail and from your own blog that you also LOVE ice cream. Two things I know: where every public bathroom is and where to get the best ice cream! Chiara lived on Newbury St right next door to JP Licks – 10 steps to Starbucks, 4 steps to JP Licks. Here was my diet arithmetic for today. Breakfast was a yogurt fruit shake, no lunch, dinner was 8 Buffalo wings and blue cheese AND on the way home, I drove right into the Cone Zone’s parking lot and walked out with Java Jolt and Peanut Butter Crunch – best dinner of the week!!!
Hi Laurie! Glad that our shared love of ice cream has brought us together! 😉 I’d say that your priorities – ice cream and a good public bathroom – are totally in order (the right order! ;-)…Chiara was a lucky gal, btw. And I’m inspired by your diet of the day. But I’m wondering if Java Jolt kept you up tonight…If I were to replicate it, I just might have to reverse the order of your perfect meal day (can’t handle caffeine at night). Hope to meet you one of these days!
Well it’s late and I’m up BUT not from the Java Jolt. My sister called and that killed a half hour and I’m addicted to HOUSE and Oxygen is showing back to back to back episodes!
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