Peppermint Ice Cream!

If you ask me, peppermint flavor is for toothpaste. Except once a year, that is. When the holiday season rolls around I’m always ready and rarin’ for a wintery blast of cool candy cane goodness and there’s no better way to get it than in ice cream form.

I don’t have children so I don’t really know for sure but I suspect that, what with the internet and all, the competition to hunt down and capture one of the hot toys of the year for your kid to unwrap on the big day isn’t quite as fierce as it used to be. Well, since I discovered peppermint ice cream a decade or so ago I’ve learned the pain of the 80s and 90s parents who battled (figuratively often and literally sometimes) for the Cabbage Patch Kids and the Tickle Me Elmos. I look for peppermint ice cream in stores every year but, more often than not, I leave empty handed. Sometimes I don’t find it all season long. Peppermint ice cream sells out fast.

That’s why this year was so special. I got it three times!

The first was early in the season. Dreyer’s Limited Edition Peppermint Wonderland. It’s the perfect representation of the basic flavor. Nothing but smooth, cold and delicious peppermint ice cream with crunchy peppermint pieces mixed in.

Sadly, the picture you’re looking at is the only bowl I had. The rest of the container perished in the Great Refrigerator Motor Burn Out Tragedy of 2015. We lost a lot of good men that day…

I thought it was all over for the year but I was wrong. I couldn’t believe my luck when I got another shot at peppermint glory.

Haagen-Dazs Limited Edition Peppermint Bark fancies it up a little. Much to my relief there was no actual bark in my ice cream but there were some chocolate chunks. Chocolate and peppermint can be a nice flavor mix so I’m not complaining. And my refrigerator held out this time so I got to eat the whole damned thing. Bonus!

And, finally, I thought Peppermint Ice Cream Season was over but as I was flying home from seeing my family for Christmas I got a treat. The flight attendants served a tiny cup of peppermint bark gelato. It was a Christmas miracle! Or possibly a post-Christmas cupboard cleaning on the part of Delta Airlines. Either way, I was too busy enjoying it to even think to take a photo for the blog. When you factor in the cost of the plane ticket it was the most expensive four bites of ice cream ever but given the rarity (and the fact that I won’t get any again for a year or more) I think it was totally worth it.

If you’ve never tried peppermint cream I highly recommend it. Unless you live in the Los Angeles area. Then I don’t recommend it at all. In fact, it’s terrible. Tastes like crap. And it also causes hair loss, impotency, and the gout. And if you eat it, the terrorists win.

(Cut me some slack, man. I have enough competition for this stuff.)