An Ice Cream Tale

 I love bittersweet chocolate ice cream. The trouble is, very few companies make it. That wasn’t always the case. A few years ago the Three Twins company made a wonderful bittersweet chocolate. Like many things we love, it disappeared when the company went out of business. That happens all too often these days. We find a product we love and then it’s suddenly gone. I have a long list of things I always looked forward to that have disappeared.  So it goes.

A few months ago, while browsing the ice cream freezer at my local grocery, I chanced to see the words Bittersweet Chocolate on an ice cream container. Well, not exactly. It was a cashew milk frozen dessert boldly displaying my favorite flavor. With lowered expectations, I purchased the product and was delighted to find it was really good. The flavor I’d been missing was now back in my life. 

Not for long. This product, manufactured by the Forager company suddenly disappeared. No store that had previously carried the flavor had it. Most that carried the brand only had Cookies and Cream in their freezers. Another mysterious loss.

One evening, fantasizing about ice cream I decided to do some serious research to see if anyone made any version of bittersweet chocolate.  After much disappointment, I discovered that the Humboldt Creamery in very Northern California did, in fact, offer bittersweet chocolate ice cream. 

But available only in Northern California. 

I drove from Portland, Oregon to the Bay Area a couple of weeks ago. On this drive I’ve done many times, I often stop for gas around Redding, California. There is a large chain grocery store near a convent gas station that is good for hard-to-find things as well as a good selection of fly fishing gear and magazines. Sure enough, there it was Humboldt Creamery Bittersweet Chocolate ice cream. What to do. I could try to eat a pint while on the road, but that wasn’t the best alternative. I waited for the return trip when I’d spend the night in Ashland, Oregon. 

I bought a pint and tasted it in the parking lot. It was as good as I hoped it would be. Then we packed it up in a freezer bag with ick blocks. By the time I got to Ashland a couple of hours later, it was time to see the results. There, in the quiet motel lobby I removed my prize cargo carefully. The ice had melted but the ice cream container was in tact. What I had was a cool, liquid that resembled and tasted like the best chocolate malt I’d ever had. Definitely worth the effort.