What is YOUR Favourite?

I am often asked, "what is your favourite ice cream flavour"?  I have a hard time answering that question for the same reason the person is asking it; there are so many to choose from! I have 20 summers of favourites!

I think my very first favourite was New York Cherry Cheesecake, back when I was a high school student, minding my parents' campground concession stand. It has a rich, smooth sophisticated flavour that emulates the kind of person I was aspiring to be: grown up, well known and well liked. Everyone anticipates great things from a sturdy graham crust with sweet creamy goodness, and so were the great expectations for my future also.

As a college student I earned extra cash working many sorts of summer jobs, but I always made my way back to the lakeside concession stand to help out the family business, and for them to help me out! Apparently my folks were right, "money doesn't grow on trees you know"! At that time my favourite flavour was Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup. You appreciate the past in a new way once you leave home.  Finding that peanut butter cup in that chocolaty ice cream made me happy, like always knowing where the spare key to your childhood home is.

When I got engaged my favourite flavour was Black Licorice.  I tried to get my fiance to try it, but he maintained that he was sticking to French Vanilla, and would not be convinced otherwise. To be honest I couldn't blame him for his preference for the clean white frozen custard, as it was indeed the epitome of classic creaminess; a perfect foil to the wild, dark zing of Black Licorice. Perhaps our choices indicated the kind of person we were looking to spend our lives with.

Interesting how over the years our favourites have changed. This year my husband's very favourite flavour IS black licorice, mine is No Sugar Added Maple Walnut.  It would seem that our personalities are more honestly linked to our ice creams of choice now. Maple Walnut is the classic stand by.  It's nutty and sweet and you can usually depend on it to be there on the menu.  Well, I'm nutty and sweet too (so I've been told) and I will be there this summer, trying and recommending all the new flavours, scooping rain or shine.

I had no clue, all those years ago when I cracked open my first tub of ice cream and dug in deep with the smooth stainless scoop how my future and my life would be defined by this cold, creamy goodness.  Knowing ice cream so personally was not what I expected. Yet, as the sweetness and bitterness of my life has been folded into the richness of new experiences, good friends and steadfast family. I can honestly say, life is sweet; the creme de la creme.