Ice cream and memories
I can still remember a profound disappointment with an ice cream flavor I chose once, and only once, as a child. We had gone to the grocery store, and I’d seen a new flavor of ice cream—a granola flavor. We bought it, brought it home, and I tried it, and it was not good.
No crunch, a strange flavor, perhaps a strange blend of cinnamon and honey and vanilla? How could you mess that up? Granola is excellent, and ice cream is excellent, and putting the two together seems like a straightforward job. I was so disappointed1 that the memory stuck with me for 40 years.
To this day, I have not tried another granola ice cream.2
On a fine day earlier this year, I bought a ticket to take an international flight on the small plane pictured above.
I took a ferry to the harbor where I could board the flight, only to find that a high wind forecast at the destination harbor had canceled my flight. No international float plane trip for me on this day, but I did end up with a few hours before I could catch the ferry back to where I was staying.
I walked around the small port town, had lunch, made some notes, tried a couple local beers, and started walking back to the ferry terminal. I stopped in a candy shop and had an ice cream cone, choosing the oatmeal cookie chip flavor from Lopez Island Creamery. This one exceeded my expectations, and reminded me of what that granola flavor of my childhood could have been.
The first time I had green tea ice cream in Shanghai was also a surprise, but not a profound disappointment like the granola ice cream. ↩︎
I have tried granola as an ice cream topping, which brings me back to the original point: a practically inedible granola-flavored ice cream I had as a child was profoundly disappointing for the reason that it should have been delicious. ↩︎