Bittersweet Ice Cream...

July 31 has often been a bittersweet day for me. When I was in school, it just about marked the halfway point of summer vacation (it was all downhill from there!), but it is also my birthday.

Now, even as I get older, I love birthdays, but now that I am aware of the existence of National Ice Cream Month, it will forever be the last day of the best month of the year.

So, here I am, another year older, and one ice cream month wiser.

Thanks for taking part in our National Ice Cream Month post-a-thon and keep visiting! (This month has certainly inspired us to be better bloggers!)

P.S. Results of the onesie cone-test will be up soon! Good luck!

Blogalicious: Ice Cream Journal

Scoopalicious has a number of other favorite ice cream sites on its right hand side, and I keep a list of ice cream blogs in my Google Reader so that I can keep up with what is going on in ice cream land. Once in a while though, we like to give a special shout out to our neighbors in blogland.

Yesterday Tina and I got a lovely little "hi" email from our friends at Ice Cream Journal (Turkey Hill Ice Cream's Blog) and I thought it was due time to highlight their blog.

I love Ice Cream Journal for a lot of reasons. One of my favorite parts is "Ask Ernie" in which Ernie -- though I am not quite sure what his background is -- answers readers' questions about everything from specific queries about Turkey Hill Ice Cream to more general ones such as "What Causes an Ice Cream Headache?" Might it be no coincidence that my husband and I are naming our new puppy Ernie?

I also love keeping up with the surveys they post. Did you know that most people answering the current Turkey Hill survey proudly eat ice cream right out of the carton?

Though Ice Cream Journal rarely posts recipes for making your own ice cream (they do sell ice cream and it wouldn't make too much sense if they were giving out recipes to make your own), they do post a plethora of ways to use their ice cream from festive holiday snowballs of ice cream to today's Duetto Lemon Pie (thinking of you, former roommate Tara...!) And for those of you who do want to be a little creative and try making ice cream without a machine, the blog even has a recipe for, that's right, Tin Can Ice Cream. (And when you are done, you can use the cans to call next door to invite your neighbors to ice cream!)

Turkey Hill's Blog is a great one, and helps highlight the variety of blogs out there, from the small, do-it-yourselfers such as Tina and I, to the big companies who want to have a more personal voice like Turkey Hill...

I love making homemade ice cream, but when I am in the mood to buy it, it's Turkey Hill Choco Mint Chip all the way. The only way for it to be better? For me to call my friend Swati and invite her over to eat the mint chocolate chip out of the carton while watching TV together...

[Scoopalicious is celebrating National Ice Cream month with a Post-A-Day throughout the month of July!]

Holy Cannoli Gelato at Cha Cha's, NYC

Yay another weekend in NYC for me! Love the city and even more fun when its a girl's weekend full of eating, sightseeing, cocktails, and of course, ice cream. Well Gelato in this case but something frozen and yummy.

So we head out of our hotel on 42nd and continue to walk, and walk, and walk, and walk until we hit Little Italy. I had never been to this part of the city so I was quite excited to see how it compares to our North End of Boston. Definitely much smaller than I anticipated but it was packed with people. Oh and one annoying opera contest that we couldn't seem to get away from. It was enough to drive me to eat more gelato to distract me. So anyways, this street is packed with good old italian eateries, street vendors, and wow lots of people. Definitely different than Boston's italian district...NYC is sort of like a piazza where Boston is a quaint street with old and new restaurants and a bustle of people on the sidewalks but nothing like NYC and its restaurants back to back with tables packed to the sidewalks edge.

So I was on the hunt for some funky gelateria but this district is truly authentic and style is not at the top of the list. So Cha Cha's sure jumped out at me or maybe I ran into it while dodging crowds. Who knows but at this point in the day, 4 hours of walking and 90 degrees and sunny it was a great find. As you can see by the picture above this is no fancy Pinkberry. It's full of character and what matters most is the gelato. They probably offered about 15 gelato flavors and 15 italian ice flavors.

So what was my choice...Holy Cannoli and Chocolate. I love cannolis and almost debated a cannoli over gelato so this was a great compromise. And the chocolate had a rich chocolate brown color that looked like it'd be intense in flavor. I had to scream to ask the guy what Holy Cannoli actually was and he responded back to me with a great native New Yorker accent ..."Ever heard of a cannoli...it has that in it!" No shit Sherlock! So my take is that its vanilla based with pieces of the cannoli shell and chocolate chips throughout (pic on left). Another answer I could barely hear sounded like they actually mushed filled cannolis in with vanilla gelato but I wasn't getting much of that ricotta flavor so not sure this is the case. In all it was good, not great. The chocolate was much better with a rich and smooth flavor. Regardless it was perfect after walking the city. My friend actually calculated that we walked 7.5 miles just that afternoon so I don't feel one bit bad about getting two scoops. Man, I should have gotten more!

Interesting factoid about Cha Cha's (which is actually a restaurant not just a gelato cart)..."The best thing about Cha Cha's is its owner John "Cha Cha" Ciarcia. He started off as a boxing promoter for Tony Danza and ended up as the "go to guy....when you need something done..if ya know what I'm sayin." Love Tony Danza!

[Scoopalicious is celebrating National Ice Cream month with a Post-A-Day throughout the month of July!]

Ben and Jerry's Factory Tour

Sometimes I act just like a kid: I get so excited for something that when it finally happens, I am a little bit disappointed. That happened on Friday. Seeing as I love to see how things are made and I love ice cream, I had hyped up the Ben and Jerry's tour so much in my head and when we finally went on it, it just wasn't as wonderful as I expected.

The tour was quick, crowded and pretty standard. It started off with a quick film about the history and the 3-part-mission (which I really admired) of Ben and Jerry's and then our lively tour guide took us through the plant for the eight step process of making the ice cream (each step was labeled in the factory room as we looked down from the catwalk and she talked us through it). Our tour ended with a small scoop of strawberry cheesecake ice cream.

I do have to say, as a collector of ice cream paraphernalia, I did enjoy the gift shop! (I can either look at it as being unfortunate for my collection or lucky for my wallet that the shop is currently unavailable online!)

Afterwards we visited the flavor graveyard up on the hill, which was kind of fun and it inspired me to create my own flavor graveyard beginning with brother-in-law Liam's Lime Spoom. [Appropriately, at our next stop to the Rock of Ages (a great tour, I might add), I was able to pick up some flat granite scraps to use for this purpose!]

I couldn't take pictures for you on the actual tour, but I did manage to get a couple on the grounds and some photos-allowed sites.

Bethany and Kevin as Ben and Jerry

Bethany coming out of a carton of ice cream?
(It's really just an ice cream carton podium
in the sample room.)

I did have fun with my parents, husband, sister and brother-in-law, so spending time with them was well worth it...! Wished my little sister was there too, but alas, she was enjoying her own ice cream down in Virginia, and hopefully she'll be guesting with a field report soon! (Thanks, Arianna!)

Sunday Sundae

Did you know that Serendipity 3 (yes, the namesake of the movie by the same name) in New York City serves the Guinness Book of World Records' most expensive dessert? Yep. It's the $1000 Golden Opulence Sundae. Serendipty's website doesn't say much about what's in it, but Wikipedia describes it as "The dessert consists of five scoops of Tahitian vanilla bean ice cream infused with Madagascar vanilla, covered in 23-carat edible gold leaf, rare Amedei Porceleana and Chuao chocolate, American Golden caviar, passion fruit, orange, Armagnac, candied fruits from Paris, marzipan cherries, and decorated with real gold dragees. The sundae is served in a baccarat Harcourt crystal goblet with an 18-karat gold spoon."

Do you think you get to keep the goblet and spoon?

Another Serendipity bonus? Star sightings...apparently this 60th Street gem is a celebrity hotspot...

[Editor's Note: Don't expect a tasting review by either of us anytime soon...not in our budget!]

[Scoopalicious is celebrating National Ice Cream month with a Post-A-Day throughout the month of July!]