Rocky Road: The New Crack
I have all kinds of updates to post, about life-after-haircut (above), about D.U.’s graduation, about seeing my adorable nieces tonight–stuff like that. But I think what I really want to tell you about is Haagen Dazs Rocky Road ice cream (also above, in case you hadn’t noticed).
Okay, seriously. Remember before every single brand of ice cream had fifty million different things in it, like oreos and heath bars and macadamia nuts, cookie dough, chocolate covered cherries, fishie crackers, dingleberries? Remember when your mom took you to the ice cream counter just at the local drug store to get an ice cream cone? Back then your choices were pretty much limited to chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, chocolate chip, pralines & cream, maybe peppermint stick (my favorite, when I was lucky and they had it). And there was always Rocky Road.
I’m obviously dating myself (jeez, on so many levels) and most of you probably don’t remember life before Ben & Jerry’s. But I’d say Rocky Road was the New York Super Fudge Chunk of the ’70s. (Wikipedia, however, tells us it dates all the way back to 1929!) I didn’t pay it much heed as a kid, being absorbed with peppermint stick and/or chocolate chip–and then bubblegum when Swenson’s busted that miracle out. Come to think of it, I kind of thought of Rocky Road as boring “grown up” ice cream. But recently I picked up a pint of the Haagen Dazs version and have not been the same since. (Maybe that means I’m a grown up. Nahh…)
I don’t know if I can describe it, but I have to try. First, I recommend letting it sit at room temp about five minutes before digging in, because you want the marshmallow stuff to be a little soft. The chocolate is velvety and not overpowering, just totally classic chocolate ice cream sweetness. Tastes like it came out of a home cranker after two hours of kids cranking at a summer picnic–but better. Then your spoon runs up against an almond or two, and it is such a pleasure biting into that rich, earthy, ever so salty taste, with the creamy chocolate melting around it in your mouth. So you’re grooving on that for awhile and watching your movie or whatever, thinking, mmm, I forgot how good Rocky Road is, digging absent-mindedly for more almonds, and the next thing you know your tongue has discovered something it never, ever wants to leave. It’s the most exquisitely satisfying sweetness–not spongy, not airy, just a tad sticky, actually a little slimy, but OH. MY. GOD. is it delicious. I don’t know how in the heck they make that marshmallow goo in there, but the first time my tongue registered it, I looked down into the container (because of course I don’t eat it out of no silly bowl) and went, what the heck IS that? I really can’t think of a fattening sweet thing that tastes any better than that gooey white stuff–not cotton candy, not cake, not Smarties, not Red Vines, not even Breyer’s natural vanilla (a definite ice cream contender). For me at least, it just resonates in the center of my being and I am, for seconds at a time, swimming around in the warm ether of heaven. Then of course I have to go spelunking for more goo, more chocolate, more nuts, more goo!
Boy, I better not set that stuff out on my front porch. It’ll be gone in seconds flat like the rose bush and pretty soon there’ll be dealers pedaling it on street corners.
One last note: H.D. sells both a “light” and a regular version and, as far as I can tell, they’re identical, so that’s a bonus if you plan to scarf down, say, three pints in a sitting.
