This is not ice cream. It is home-grown arugula & a neighbor's gifted avocado with key lime dressing I made from my bounty of limes. Lovely, sure, but I repeat, NOT ICE CREAM.
That's what I've been craving to point of distraction. For a solid frikkin week.
This is not normal. Vanilla always left me cold, especially if chocolate was an option. Chocolate, specifically MILK chocolate could motivate me to do anything except lose weight.
Sure, I went through a noir phase where I thought the darker the chocolate the better, until 3 things swung that pendulum:
1. Über-dark chocolate actually tastes a bit sour. I generally love sour, even going as far as to always buy two jars of pickles--one sweet & one dill, take them home & switch the pickles from one jar into the brine of the other. But sour & chocolate...oh HELL no.
2. Scientists a few years back discovered dark chocolate is GOOD for you. So much for stolen moments with purloined & verboten pleasures. My perversity switch flipped & I immediately preferred milk chocolate with its sales pitch of 'no redeeming qualities whatsoever.'
3. Texture. Like the saw about the secret to real estate being location, location, location, my cravings are always about texture, texture, texture--smooth, silky, 'I won't fight back' texture without the graininess frequently characteristic of super dark chocolate varieties.
So why vanilla with strawberries??
These, while perfectly delicious, are Surinam cherries & decidedly NOT strawberries. Not even close.
I blame it on global warming, that bastard. Somehow vanilla with berries sounds summery & cool...& I WANT IT NOW! And so this week at the most inopportune moments, that phrase in all caps & a much larger font repeatedly flashed in my head, like a peskily bright neon sign right outside your window when you're trying to sleep.
It was flashing thusly when my ex sweetheart called to launch another salvo in the perpetual battle to remove the 'ex' prefix from his title. And genuinely liking the guy & so not being a jerk & just yelling 'NO!,' I did what I always do & pivoted to an Un-relationship-related or 'safe' topic, that of how after dieting since mid-March & successfully quashing most evil cravings, this week I had somehow become the bitch of a specific frozen dessert idea.
And that was when I suddenly understood the WWII bargaining power wielded by soldiers offering Hershey bars & nylons to women deprived of same. When he offered to be at my house in minutes, bringing the coveted & craved ice cream & topping, it was all I could do not to give up my beachhead--the position I've stalwartly held for a year & a half. Realizing my vulnerability, I cleverly threw out a plausible excuse to end the conversation quickly & before I succumbed--'I have to run now--Mu's playing with matches & you know how flammable she is!'
Because I'm smooth like that. Smooth like ice cream...
Mu, laughing at the flammability comment because as she says, 'How am I supposed to light a match without opposable thumbs?'
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