Clean Crash

look! these are not my fingernails!

Frankly I was cranky the first time that it showed up in the freezer, but I am here to report that Caramel Cone by Haagen-Dazs is the best possible flavor of ice cream, if not the best possible flavor of anything.

I never loved ice cream until I was pregnant. Without a fetus inside me, I prefer a dessert with crumbs in it. Crumbs and lemon and salt and cream.

(Maybe tomorrow I will get four pets and name them: Crumbs, Salt, Lemon, Cream.

Crumbs would be a turtle.

Salt would be a snake.

Lemon would be a bunny.

Cream would be a cat.

Except, pet-flavored dessert is not the best kind, and that is something we can all agree on.)

As for real-world ice cream, I love the idea of the Ben and Jerry’s brand, because of green and Vermont and politics and things that are character driven. And perhaps more importantly, those are ice creams designed for maximalists, of which I am one. Pretzels stuffed crammed with peanut butter, bits of chocolate shaped like little fish ready to melt in your mouth, insouciant sediments frozen midway through some marvelous geology of butterfat wonder: I am pleased by this.  But I’m not the person in our house who cares too much about ice cream, and as anyone who has tried being married, or at least being married to me, can attest, marriage is about compromises. Though actually, our familial switch to the Haagen-Dazs brand may have as much to do with the fact that in New York, that’s what they sell in all of the delis, and ice cream is more of an impulse buy than most of the rest of the groceries.

The first time my husband made dinner for me, it was August and we grilled tuna on his fire escape and dressed it with herbs from his windowsill herb garden. Well, he did those things, and I sat and drank gin and tonics. Later that night, we walked out to get some ice cream. This was his idea. I hadn’t spent much time in his neighborhood before, certainly not after dark, and he seemed either wholly unaware or wholly unconcerned that we were about to be killed at any moment. We walked through a tunnel over to a deli in a neighborhood where it was late enough that they were exterminating their astroturfed fruit shelves. We slid money through a slot in some bullet proof glass because it was too late for the actual deli to be open.

That night, we got chocolate. We rarely get just plain chocolate these days, because we have a child and we would rather die than be more tired than we are, and chocolate keeps us up, like crazy geriatrics. But back then, I was getting a glimpse into his intense desire for ice cream, and for chocolate. Later I would experience it myself, when I was carrying his child, who apparently inherited that gene. Now that the child is out and about, I have a far more normal relationship to chocolate ice cream, but I’ve glimpsed the darkness of addiction.

I also refuse to get plain vanilla. Even though many people with excellent taste buds love vanilla ice cream and delight in say things like “vanilla ice cream is a barometer: it’s  like a margherita pizza; you get that one, and you judge by that,”and I love vanilla in my food, I feel sad when I am not experiencing a fuller tableau when I am splurging. I want some contrasts. Ice cream should be exciting, and vanilla might be refined, but it’s hard to get the joy of reveling in excess when staring into a bowl of white. I want things floating, changes of texture, salt, maybe something bitter. (For the record, I also like toppings on my pizza.)

I used to love Chocolate Peanut Butter by Haagen-Dasz the most, but I believe that in recent years, our collective tastes have morphed and that the current zeitgeist for salt in our sweet drives flavors like Dulce de Leche and Caramel Cone.

So now, I am onto Caramel Cone, which has salt and crunch and crumbs and chewiness and chocolate. Try it, even if it doesn’t sound that good. Try it. Try it!

“Clean crash” is a phrase to describe to what happens after the sugar rush from a bowl of ice cream ends. Matthew theorizes that it’s a “clean crash,” which can actually help you to sleep. We tell ourselves what we must, don’t we.