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You’d think I was a grocery shopping newbie!
This is the second time in the past few months I’ve bought ice cream without double-checking I was really getting ice cream. Seems weird that you’d actually have to check this, but you can buy something called frozen dessert which, believe me, is not ice cream!
We are never without ice cream in our home. Ice cream is a staple – one of those foods we don’t run out of, or if we do (heaven forbid!), it’s at the top of the list for the next trip to the grocery store.
I was on a mission to buy ice cream recently when I spotted Breyers ice cream on sale and grabbed a carton of vanilla.
A few days later we sat down to enjoy a piece of pie and a scoop of vanilla ice cream. With the first mouthful, I know something was very wrong. I’m not sure how to describe the flavour and the feel of the “ice cream” in my mouth. Artificial? Sticky? Just plain yucky? Certainly it wasn’t the sweet creamy vanilla taste I was expecting. An inspection of the carton provided an explanation. Instead of vanilla ice cream, we were eating vanilla “frozen dessert”. Say what??
Breyers Vanilla Frozen Dessert - not ice cream!
These ingredient lists show the difference between frozen dessert and ice cream:
Breyers Vanilla Frozen Dessert: Modified milk ingredients, water, sugar, modified palm oil, glucose, mono and diglycerides, natural and artificial flavour, cellulose gum, guar gum, polysorbate 80, carrageenan.
Breyers Naturals Vanilla Ice Cream: Evaporated whole milk, cream, sugar, egg yolks, natural vanilla flavour, pure ground vanilla beans.
I’m trying to choose paint colours for a home reno project, but I seem to have worked up an appetite and it’s proving rather difficult to focus on the subtle differences between french vanilla and vichyssoise……mayonnaise and pale celery……mixed fruit and perky peach……hot spice and tangy orange tangerine…….and summer harvest and butter rum. (And if you liked those Benjamin Moore paint colour names, believe me, I could go on citing lots more colours named after food! Whoever is in charge of naming paints over there must like to eat!)
Now really. Who wouldn’t be hungry looking at colour chips like these?
Now if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll go make dinner……
I suspect Julia Child has a few new fans since Meryl Streep brought her to life in the big screen production Julie & Julia.
From what I’ve been hearing and reading since the movie’s debut on Aug. 7, copies of Child’s My Life in France are being snapped up along with Mastering the Art of French Cooking, the cookbook she wrote with Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle.
Julie Powell‘s book, Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously, and her blog (The Julie/Julia Project), on which the movie was based, are also proving to be popular reads.
Whether this translates into more meals being served in kitchens around the country that don’t come straight from a package, a can or the drive thru remains to be seen, but if the movie serves to generate interest in all things culinary, I say thanks, Julie and Julia!
Some Julia Child and Julie Powell links -
I’m one of those oddball Canadians who doesn’t frequent Tim Hortons on a regular basis……probably because I’m not a coffee drinker! I have sipped the occasional iced cappuccino, hot smoothee, or hot chocolate from Timmies, but my visits to this hallowed Canadian institution are rather infrequent.
While in New York City recently I walked past a couple small Tim Hortons restaurants that had just opened. These weren’t the stand-alone establishments with drive thrus we’re used to finding on every other street corner in Canada. These were small coffee shops sandwiched between souvenir shops, clothing stores and hotels on busy streets in Manhattan. I wondered how they would fare in the U.S. and how quickly Americans would pick up the Timmies coffee lingo.
Ordering a beverage at Tim’s – or at just about any other coffee establishment – has always held a kind of mystique for me since the world of double doubles, mocacchinos, grandes and lattes is not one I visit very often.
Luckily for me and all those Americans just being introduced to Tim’s, the Facebook group Tim Hortons Rules of Ordering and More (which boasts over 7,000 members!) has posted a comprehensive list of rules for proper behaviour and ordering at Tim’s. The group is for “everyone who gets fed up with people who don’t know what they want, and for workers who have to put up with this everyday.” Apparently “If people would just listen to these rules when ordering, the world will be a better place.”
For the sake of world peace, you’d be advised to read on…..
