Tastes Like I'm Old

I never really thought much about my age and maturity until I realized that my taste buds changed.  There are just certain things that do no appeal to me now that may have appealed to me when I was a much younger lass.  One of those things is ice cream.  I feel like when I was younger, there were a lot less ice cream flavors than there are now.  I think as a kid it was neopolitan or rocky road, those were the two choices in the household freezer.  There may have been other flavors out there, but those were the only ones that existed in my world, unless it came off of the ice cream truck.

I don't think I realized I reached adulthood with my ice cream until I took my utterly charming yet sarcastic 14 year old niece to The Turkey Hill Experience.  For those people that are not locals,  Turkey Hill is a chain of gas stations that for some reason also sells a wide selection of ice cream, ice tea and lemonade.  They also sell it in grocery stores and I learned by from the presentation, it is accessable all over the country. The Turkey HIll Experience is a small factory like tour that is super kid friendly and for a small ticket fee, lets you eat and drink as much ice cream and ice tea as you want. There are enough activities to keep various age ranges amused.  

One of the most worth while things to do is the pay a little bit extra on the ticket and go into the test lab where they will walk you through how to flavor your own pint of ice cream.  This is where I discovered that I like a mature flavor in ice cream.

My niece, Hannah proceeded to mutter and laugh about how her ice cream was going to be the best one ever and she wasn't going to share.  Then she proceeded to put cotton candy extract into it, and my tastebuds retracted in fear.  If there was one flavor that does not appeal to me as an adult it is cotton candy.  I couldn't even tell you the last time I ate cotton candy. It doesn't exist in my world as a thing that I would want to eat.  As if the flavoring of cotton candy wasn't enough, she proceeded to at cotton candy sprinkles into the swirling white creamy mix, further distancing my inclination to steal her ice cream at a later date.  The icing on the cake  (of in this case , ice cream) was the cake batter icing swirl she added to it.  I don't think electric blue is a natural flavoring and cake batter icing sounds like something that would cause my dentist to whimper.   I am pretty sure that Hannah madeWhen it  the perfect ice cream that would leave me with no desire to ever try it, and that she loved. How I wish I could go back and ask 14 year old me if I would like cotton candy ice cream with cake batter swirl and cotton candy sprinkles. I wonder what my answer would be. 

When it came time for me to make my ice cream, I stuck to things that I knew my husband would like. (Honestly, I was a little ice creamed out from the one sample that I had.  It was good, but it wasn't even lunch time and breakfast wasn't that much of a long forgotten memory yet. I have never been a lets eat ice cream for breakfast sort of person.)  My boring adult ice cream consisted of chocolate and coffe flavoring with chocolate covered espresso beans and peanut butter cups with a peanut butter swirl.  I was informed by my niece that I was doing it wrong and then I proceeded to tell her that her uncle was going to eat her ice cream.  My brother, who was the referee in this adventure just rolled his eyes and made his own very adult flavored ice cream (cherry flavoring, cherry pieces and chocolate covered espresso beans.)

I would definitely be interested in doing the Turkey Hill Experience again, because it was fun. I enjoyed the different things to check out and despite realizing I am old and eat old people ice cream, it was fun to think about different flavor combinations.  Just maybe the next time I will be able to come up with something that her and I can both agree on is awesome.  I just hope it doesn't include any sort of cotton candy or icing swirls.