The summer in treats, so far

Fran Magazine: Issue #117

Jul 31, 2024

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Fran announcement

Do you live in New York City? Do you like seeing movies? I am moderating the Q&A for Conner O’Malley and Danny Scharar’s Rap World next Tuesday, August 6th, at 7pm at BAM!! Conner and Danny will be there. Eric Rahill and Jack Bensinger will be there. Producers Harris Mayersohn and Meryl Faye Crock will be there. Come on out! It’ll be a blast!

Scream time

I had initially intended to do a product review of all the products and treats that made mono tolerable, but that all came down to me googling “Advil bottle” and otherwise posting this picture of the Walgreens haul Phil got for me at one point when everything was at its worst.

Though the mono subreddit (kill me) recommends Mucinex as a throat spray brand, I vastly preferred the Chloraseptic which was much more mild and did not feel like swallowing a match. The cepacol sore throat tablets are amazing and effective. Children’s ibuprofen — well, what can you do but laugh? The ZzzQuil melatonin is… interesting. I have an extremely complicated relationship to melatonin which I’ve used on and off for years for sleep. Actually — my relationship to melatonin is the same as my relationship to weed, where for several months of the year I announce proudly and to anyone who cares, or doesn’t, that I hate it and it’s bad and I’m trying to stop, and then inevitably I slip back into using it and I’m like, wait! this is so effective at the thing it’s made for, until I inevitably have a dream so bad I have to stop using it. The liquid melatonin is too weak to be effective as a sleep aid but… it tastes amazing. You live and you learn.

Outshine popsicles

Fran Magazine is not sponsored by any company, but if it was sponsored by a company, it would be Outshine, whose website you can access via something called “IceCream.com.” I first discovered Outshine when I had an endoscopy a few years ago and they told me I’d have a sore throat for a day or two after. I actually had no sore throat whatsoever, but I didn’t know that when I requested Tristan buy me popsicles the night before. He grabbed a box of the Outshine popsicles — they were amazing. Not too sweet, didn’t melt too quickly. I spent most of last summer eating the coconut ones. During my the worst days of my mono, I went through two multipacks: one Phil grabbed with mixed berry, black cherry, and strawberry kiwi, and one from Tristan and Claire with strawberry, lime, and cherry (presumably red). I would love to try the grape popsicles as someone who loves when something tastes grape.

Jeni’s Purple Star Born

Speaking of grape… I bought two pints of Jeni’s new grape flavor, which is very stupidly called “Purple Star Born” and not something someone can remember easily. The flavor promises a tart combination of concord grape and blackcurrant. It definitely tastes of real grape, and not the artificial grape that permeates the dessert and treat industry. Phil’s complaint is that it tastes too much like grape. I would actually say my complaint is that it doesn’t taste grape enough. The blackcurrants are really potent (albeit good) giving this is an overall “fruit” flavor that I’m not totally wowed by. Last summer, my Brooklyn favorite — Albero Dei Gelati — did a flavor that was just straight up concord grape. Now THAT was tart. That stuff was sour! It was awesome. You can’t just buy two Jeni’s pints online so I had to load up my order with a few other flavors. I also got Cosmic Bloom, which is a combination of mandarin, kiwi, and passionfruit. Having had a multitude of Jeni’s flavors that involve passionfruit, this is probably the least passionfruit…y. Mostly it takes like kiwi, or lightly citrus. There was a short-lived flavor in their colors collection (shoutout the year 2015) called Ultramarine Blue that tasted like a purple Flintstones vitamin. This flavor tastes like an orange Flintstones vitamin. I also got a pint of their dairy-free Cold Brew with Coconut Cream, which is just the kind of thing that tastes like a beverage I like, and their lemon and blueberry frozen yogurt, an old stand-by, perfect with slightly microwaved fudge.

McConnell’s Fine Ice Cream

The McConnell’s pints are often on sale at our grocery store, and Phil and I have been trying a few out here and there. He grabbed a pint of their Eureka Lemon and Marionberries — a flavor that’s working too hard in its title and is obviously reminiscent of the aforementioned Jeni’s flavor, HOWEVER — I think this being a proper ice cream, instead of a buttermilk frozen yogurt, makes it much less sour and much more sweet, kind of like a lemon custard pie. I have been pleasantly surprised with this one. Two other flavors we’ve had in the house: Double Peanut Butter Cup and Sweet Cream Caramel Brownie. Most peanut butter ice creams are too rich for me. I won’t dig up gender essentialism, okay, maybe I will for a second, but to me a peanut butter ice cream is sort of a “boy flavor,” based solely on my MANY YEARS of ice cream food service experience.1 The Sweet Cream Caramel Brownie is exactly what it sounds like on the box.

Alec’s

I can’t remember who recommended this brand, or suggested this brand, or who said, “Have you tried this brand?” I bought a pint of the salted dark chocolate, which tastes like normal milk chocolate. If you are the person who brought this up to me, please identify yourself and tell me what flavor I should have gotten besides this one.

Stewart’s Shops

When I was up in the Adirondacks on residency, I was introduced to the concept of Stewart’s — a combination ice cream shop-gas station with very generous hours where I constantly invented reasons to have to go. (Eventually, my invented reasons became “having mono” — yay!) I have a reputation among some friends for fiendishly opting for every shop’s weirdest flavor in lieu of stuff that is normal — cookies ‘n cream, cookie dough, chocolate, whatever. First of all, my canonical favorite flavor is mint chocolate chip. Normal alert! In general, my go-to picks are usually one step removed from “regular” — mint, coffee, salted caramel, pistachio. All great. At Stewart’s, however, removed from the context in which I exist, I got all sorts of stuff I basically never order when out with company: brownie cheesecake, brownie cookie sundae, caramel cheesecake. They were all amazing.

Biddrina Gelato

As mentioned in this week’s Sunday Dispatch, I was pooped on by a bird (unseen, at night) while eating Strawberry Fennel and Anise Coffee with White Chocolate gelato. I suppose when friends joke that I always order insane flavors this is what they’re talking about, but in my defense, they were out of pistachio.

Carvel

I live up the block from a combination Carvel and Cinnabon. The latter treat has and always will disgust me (Fran Magazine is staunchly ANTI-cinnamon roll), but I am weak for a soft serve cone every now and then. Exactly 50% of the time I go into the Carvel, the soft serve machine is broken which helps keep a habit at bay. To me, there is nothing better than a child-size soft serve vanilla cone, sprinkles or no sprinkles. The other week while on a walk with Sydney I tried the swirl (standard chocolate-vanilla combo). Not my favorite thing in the world, but still better than having nothing.

What treats are you enjoying this summer? Has anyone been making ice cream from scratch? (I haven’t but hope to start up again this weekend.) Do you guys like this little section where I write in italics so people know what to talk about in the comments or does it make this blog post feel like a worksheet? Sound off below.

Fran Magazine