We all scream

How about this: the latest Ben and Jerry's flavor, which is called something like Confession Obsession, or Concession Obsession, or Animotion is freakish and wrong.

I like a lot of junk in my ice cream, but this one shudder. Vanilla bean ice cream (I don't know the difference between vanilla bean and plain vanilla, except that vanilla bean sucks) with chocolate peanuts, chocolate covered crispy rice, non-pareils and a caramel ribbon. I never did find the caramel ribbon, and for that I am thankful.

This flavor is such a wrong-headed mish-mash, I can't relate the wrongness to anything; it just is. I had to eat it to get to the strawberry at the bottom of my waffle cone. This proves to me once again that double scoops are a bad idea for me, and that when I have a waffle cone with more than one flavor, I should always have a spoon.

I don't even like ice cream that much any more. Well, I'll amend that slightly: I like the ice cream at Lazy Sundae, but I no longer like Ben and Jerry's.

The other night Rob and I went to dinner in Clarendon and I insisted on stopping by Lazy Sundae. It was a good thing, as one of the flavors on the board was my favorite, lemon. Lemon is one of those ice cream flavors that takes me back to the time when I could legitimately enjoy ice cream.

Back then, double scoops were fine, except that I often lost my top scoop. My favorite combination if I couldn't get peppermint or cherry vanilla was a scoop of strawberry and a scoop of lemon.

Lemon ice cream is a little like lemon pudding. It is not tangy, tart or sour, but as flavors of soft, sweet things go, lemon is less soft, less sweet, just a tiny bit smoother. Today, lemon ice cream takes me back to the endless summer day, where I am always six years old and the swings are always calling.

I can live with that.

before - after