It'll Make You Scream

Let me be quite clear... this is not a product-posting blog. This is a vegan country cooking blog. That said, since going vegan, I've been remiss to find ice cream that tastes like real ice cream from my animal-eating days. And I promised myself that if I ever found real vegan country ice cream, that I'd scream it to the world. I FINALLY found it, after three and a half years of searching and taste-testing. The closest I'd found thus far were Almond Dream and hemp milk ice creams, both lacking the traditional creaminess. Seems you need to leave them out on the counter for at least 10 minutes to allow them to soften. Otherwise, they're frozen blocks of pureed flavored nuts and grain.

And I'll tell you, I'm an ice cream connoisseur. Growing up, my mom started a weekly Tuesday night tradition: game and ice cream night. It's one of my greatest memories as a kid (and on through college!). Each Tuesday night at 7:30, my mom, sisters, and me would choose a board or card game, sit on the den floor, and play games until about 8:30, at which point, the main event happened... My mom would go into the kitchen and scoop humongous bowls of ice cream for each of us to devour until 9:00. The bar for ice cream quality was henceforth set impossibly high. 

There's not been much I've missed as a vegan. I don't miss wearing animal skins as fashion statements. I don't miss animal carcasses served as entrees on my plate. I don't really miss the fatty textures of cheese or butter. I don't miss the farm-y taste of another species' milk. And I certainly don't miss eggs... the bane of my existence, as I'm impossibly allergic. 

But I have missed a good bowl of ice cream for old time's sake. So when I stumbled upon Trader Joe's strawberry coconut milk ice cream I was hopeful... though skeptical, as I HATE HATE HATE coconut, and have not been able to stomach the taste of coconut milk ice creams. Too tropical, too heavy. So I bought one and once home, gingerly tasted it, hopeful that I hadn't wasted another $4 on fake (hard, crumbly, weird) ice cream. 

I'd pay $10 for this stuff. No coconut flavor at all. This stuff tastes like old fashioned, country, homemade, rich ice cream BURSTING with strawberry flavor. Even my husband who passionately hates coconut was instantly addicted to this stuff. Not one hint of coconut flavor. We both just kept sitting there at the kitchen table, mumbling like idiots, "It's sooooooooo creamy........" and stuffing our faces. 

I read that this comes also in chocolate, however none of our local Trader Joe's seem to carry the chocolate yet. For now, I'm in love with strawberry. For part of my Valentine's Day gift yesterday, my husband surprised me with six containers of this stuff! Living out in the country, we're about an hour from the nearest Trader Joe's, so he made the journey to hold me over for a few weeks. I'd been saving about a quarter inch's worth in the carton for weeks, terrified that I'd not be able to get more... until David showed up with an armful to ease my heart!