Job Perks

I said goodbye to Alex last night. We made dinner after flipping, bewildered, through 4 cookbooks, strung out between our laziness, our vegetarianism, and our personal preferences. Dinner also involved a 45-minute visit to Shaws that quickly degenerated into us sitting on the ledge of the ravioli cooler, with Alex enumerating our dinner choices for about the 5th time. He is cripplingly indecisive about choices, and I am cripplingly neurotic about food (what I like, what is healthy, what food combinations are good, making a complete protein, being in charge of the recipe). Finally we decided to make a veggie curry with fresh raspberries on top. No they didn't go. But we loved their invasion into the dish just the same.

After dinner Alex walked me back to Jays' house, and we decided to bring him a present. See, Alex works at J.P. Lick's, which for those of you who don't know, is a pretty great ice cream company in the Boston area. J.P. Lick's has flavors of the month, and they're usually original and experimental. Over the summer, I tried their cucumber ice cream, which actually tasted exactly like cucumbers, in ice cream form. I was impressed. One of the perks of working at J.P. Lick's is that you can have as many free 2.5 gallon containers of leftover flavors-of-last-month as you can eat. They can't sell it anymore, and nobody wants to waste food. Alex has 2.5 gallons of apple cider ice cream in his fridge. It was good, but had the realistic bite that cider has, which to me doesn't go well with the creamy flavor of ice cream. While we were talking about the cider ice cream, Alex mentioned that the store still had two tubs of last month's Noodle Kugel ice cream. What? Noodle Kugel ice cream. Although it was apparently very good, they just couldn't find a home for it. And I said, I want to give that to Jay! Because it's like a practical joke where everyone wins.

On the walk over, Alex says to me, "I don't think Jay will find this as funny as we do." I know he can't possibly find it as funny as I do (because I think it's hysterical), but how can it be bad? Well, here's why: 1) Today was trash day 2) Worst. Flavor. Ever 3) And he's not even a Jew 4) He can't possibly have room in the freezer 5) Most Inconvenient Portion Size. Ever 6) It's not even ice cream season.

I gave it to him anyway. And he was delighted (I mean, I don't think I've ever seen this guy have a negative attitude about anything) and we opened it up. He grabbed a pile of spoons and we dug in. The verdict? White, creamy ice cream, with some nutmeg, cinnamon, and vanilla flavor. And noodles IN the ice cream. Sort of chewy-like. It tasted...like noodle kugel, in ice cream form. J.P. Lick's does it again.