NCDS Frozen Four: Write-Ups
Ready to vote? Click here.
Cookie dough vs. mint chocolate chip. I have the same problem with cookie dough ice cream that I have with candy corn: I can’t eat just one kernel, or just ten kernels, or just one heaping double handful.I eat it until it’s gone, and then I feel desperately ill.Eggnog, same problem, and it’s not that I don’t love it, but the diabetic gassiness that ensues from our love…I have to maintain a wary bad-break-up distance.Mint chocolate chip is one of my three favorite flavors, and without setting off a compulsive dessert/Maalox chowing cycle, so once again I vote m.c.c. — but I think the last remaining non-top seed is getting beat this round.
Strawberry vs. vanilla. I like strawberry ice cream, but I do have one eensy issue: if it doesn’t have big honkin’ fruit chunks in it, it tends to taste fake, but on the other hand, the honkin’ chunks hurt my teeth because they hold the cold.It’s not strawberry’s fault; it’s because I eat too fast (see: Wing threatening to confiscate my Jamba Juice if I couldn’t stop giving myself a brain freeze every 15 seconds), but I am what I am.Also, vanilla is more portable, and I think enough people will vote against strawberry (or for apple pie accouterments) to give the win to vanilla.
Tags: candy corn food Jamba Juice Maalox
I’ve had some very fake tasting vanilla ice cream too, so then it’s fake AND boring. Go strawberry!
My favorite double dip combination is strawberry and mint chocolate chip together.
What? It’s REALLY GOOD.
I love strawberry ice cream, but even if I didn’t, I’d vote against vanilla, my least favorite ice cream flavor on the planet. Yech. I knew it’d go far, too, as I seem to be alone in my hatred…I just don’t get it.
I’m still in awe that cookies and cream didn’t make the Final 4. I’d say cookie dough to win it all … but wow, MCC has some seriously devoted fans.
Best tags ever. :-)
I LOVE good vanilla ice cream just by itself. When it gets creamy and soft on the outside but is still holding it’s shape? Heaven. I have eaten a half-gallon of double vanilla in one sitting, slowly scooping the melty parts and then impatiently waiting for the rest to get soft.
And even just decent vanilla makes a good base for chocolate or fruit. Or peanut butter chocolate milkshakes. Or frozen hot chocolate, which sounds silly but is very good. And we can’t neglect the importance of the ice cream in making root beer floats.
Go Team Vanilla!
I say that cookie dough and vanilla make it to the final. Just you see.
Oh god, I love cookie dough, but I’ve gained ten pounds this summer, and I’m pretty sure at least half of that is BIG CHUNKS OF COOKIE DOUGH lodged in my arteries. I don’t know what it is,but you’re right…there’s something about it that compels you to eat until it’s done.
I hate mint chocolate chip, so that one’s an easy call for me, but strawberry and vanilla is a hard call. I love a good vanilla more than a good strawberry, but I like pretty much all strawberry, good or not. So you see my dilemma.
I’ve been looking at the original list of ice creams, and I’m really curious. If it were just “vote for your favorite ice cream” or “choose your top four favorite ice creams” would you still ned up with these four ice creams as the top four?
Mind you, I love these bracket games and the commentary you two write about them, but I just got to wondering about the way that the seeding influenced what happened next.
I have the same problem with candy corn. Sweet sweet delicious candy corn. I think it’s the texture. Impossibly creamy.
Crabby – You are not alone in your hatred. I also despise vanilla ice cream. I don’t even like it in things that should make me like it…like on apple pie, or in a rootbeer float. I just find it repulsive. Blech. Therefore, I am guessing that it will win.
@crabbyappleseed: you’re not alone in your hatred for vanilla.
Vanilla = boring. Come on people! Don’t let the least exciting of all flavors make it to the top!
It seems to me that we’re crossing that fine line between classic and boring — you know, how when you try to please everybody, nobody wins? We’re there. All the transcendent, truly life-altering stuff is a distant memory at this point, leaving only…staples. Does this mean cornflakes would win the breakfast cereal matchups? Maybe we should find out.
Sophie is right. Rice Krispies for the win? Ugh. Not that my fave ice cream flavors (coffee and cookies-n-cream) are so groundbreaking…
Uch.
MCC is the Jar Jar Binks of ice cream, the Cousin Oliver, the Monica Reyes and the Urkel, all rolled into one nasty toothpaste-tasting package. CURSE YOU, mint chocolate chip, and do sod off, you nasty green crap.
And take strawberry with you when you go. Strawberry ice cream is fit only for a Holly Hobbie tea party. Especially the kind with chunks in it. They’re never fit, perky chunks; they’re like saggy, wet evidence left for the CSI team. EWW.
Oh, dear, sweet lord. Candy corn…. slussrrrhhh…. and candy corn’s cousin, those sweet, waxy pumpkins. My god, I’m at least 12.6% pumpkin by now, people.
I would love to see strawberry beat the crap out of vanilla, but it is not to be. If Sars is taking votes for the next match-ups, I want breakfast cereals, Ben & Jerry’s flavors, and chips, in that order.
The first batch of homemade ice cream my family made when I was a kid was strawberry. It was June, and the strawberry were just creeping beyond ripeness into Must Use Now territory. It was incredibly delicious – not too sweet, with a soft, luscious smell. It didn’t look all that pink, compared to the angry pink stripe you got in bricks of Neapolitan. But I’ve never forgotten it. Even now, I think strawberry ice cream has to be – HAS to be – made by hand with chunks of ripe (but not squishy) strawberries. Do I need to mention you can’t make really good strawberry ice cream, or any other, for that matter, without making at least decent vanilla?
“… saggy, wet evidence left for the CSI team”, Jaybird? Yikes. Thanks for that image, chum.
see, when i think vanilla, i only think soft ice cream flavors… and vanilla is my crush… i love that… it’s good with twist, but vanilla is my go-to… and MCC – always been a weakness… i like cookie dough, loved it when it first came out, being so close to Ben & Jerry’s as i am… but, i’ve gotten over it… i’d rather take a nice big chunk out of pillsbury cookie dough then get some out of my ice cream…
I call FIX. I mean, MCC has had a gift bracket all the way up, but then beating out C&C? No way. No WAY.
I guess it’s no surprise, given the league commissioner’s clearly stated bias, but still–the sheer obviousness of it is somewhat galling.
Right. Which would explain why the league commissioner’s very favorite flavor got thumped in the Round of 32. By all means, call Peter Ueberroth to complain.
I’d like to join the chorus of vanilla haters. It is just so freaking boring! I feel one shouldn’t have to add stuff to ice cream to make it palatable, it should be good on it’s own. Like chocolate. Poor, neglected chocolate.
AGHH I loathe vanilla – it’s bland and boring by itself! It needs help from other flavors, or at least toppings.
On the other hand, Haagen-Daaz Strawberry ice cream stands alone as a little slice of heaven on earth.
People, I don’t know where you’re coming from. Good vanilla by itself is a classic for a reason. Here’s a family legend to illustrate.
My dad and uncle once took the boat to town from the cabin (because it was faster) and bought a couple tubs of Blue Boy French Vanilla ice cream. My dad loves ice cream. The store had it frozen so hard you could cut it with a knife and eat it in blocks. Which he did. In the boat. With his filleting knife.
“Which would explain why the league commissioner’s very favorite flavor got thumped in the Round of 32. ”
That only PROVES it’s a fix, ha ha! After all, the perfect cover for a fix is to vociferously declare support for a quickly-turfed contender. Instant credibility.
also we never landed on the moon! It was all done on a movie set!
So. In honor of the NCDS, I scored an ice-cream maker on Freecycle. Yesterday, I finally got up the motivation to give it a whirl, and since I like to keep it simple in the early going, I made vanilla.
OH MY HOLY COW. Sooooooo goooooooood. SO good.
I voted for Vanilla.
And MCC! Shun the baby-punchers! ShunnnnnnnnnnN!
Janna: Awesome, your dad invented a new flavor: Vanilla Fish Guts.
All these talk of candy corn and waxy pumpkins makes me long for an October edition: Halloween candy brackets!
But Janna, French Vanilla is different- it had its own place in the brackets, IIRC.
I always thought of vanilla as lowest-common denominator ice cream. Nobody actually likes it, it’s just the least offensive to the most people. Clearly I was way off. I kind of thought chocolate could have the same effect (it’s vanilla, but with an actual flavor! but that’s all!), but it got knocked out before I expected it to.
Ugh, candy corn makes me want to barf.
I like cookie dough but the quality (read: dough-to-vanilla ratio) makes a huge difference there. I’ve had sad cookie dough that was mostly just vanilla with dough-chunks few and far between, and that’s just no fun at all.
MCC is my very favorite ice cream, and I have no problem eating it until I’m filled to bursting. I can’t do that with rich flavors like chocolate – when I’m done with chocolate, I’m *done* with chocolate, and for a while. MCC is so refreshingly cool that I can just keep going until there’s no more to be had.
MCC is awesome, is what I’m sayin’.
Oh, and Sandman? That sound really, really good. Far better than store-bought strawberry ice cream. I think I need an ice cream maker.
Now I want to buy an ice cream maker so I can experiment with all of the flavors I’ve learned about during this tournament! And I imagine it would be very satisfying to concoct some tasty, homemade treats.
I suppose I need to now educate myself about home ice-cream making!
Candy corn is the devil’s candy. I wonder how many people have sold thier souls for a bag? (But the chocolate candy corn is to barf.)
Strawberry is losing. (I blame Jaybird’s CSI comment… heh. Funny & gross, which I usually love, but not in my MOUTH! )
@crabbyappleseed: You are absolutely right, my mistake. I guess what I’m trying to say is that vanilla gives me a childhood-memory-bearing feeling, and that’s part of why I like it. Like the time your little brother somehow got ice cream all over the car when given a soft vanilla cone, or having swollen tonsils and your mother giving you plain vanilla to soothe you and/or shut you up. Maybe that’s just me, though.
@Joe Mama: Word. When we heard about it, us kids all said “Eewww,” to which my dad replied “What? I washed it in the lake first.” That was about 25 years ago, and he’s still defending himself about it.
I can’t figure out hate for chocolate. I get why some people are not happy with vanilla, and that’s okayl, but I have a five-year-old who LOATHES chocolate, won’t touch it in any form, and to save my life I cannot understand why. It’s like hating air.
Ahem. I meant “okay”.
@JenV: It really, really was. I don’t know about you or Amie, but I’m getting a copy of The Perfect Scoop just as soon as may be.
http://tinyurl.com/57vyu7
@Sandman: ooh, great idea! Thanks for the tip!
Count me in with the vanilla lovers. I just can’t wrap my head around the idea of vanilla being boring. Yes, can you get that ultra-generic cardboard tasting vanilla? Yeah, but then it’s the stuff that sits right to the ultra-generic cardboard tasting chocolate and strawberry in Neapolitan.
But the good stuff, the stuff with the little bits of vanilla bean still in it, just starting to melt so the cold doesn’t kill all of the vanilla and cream taste? Ugh, that stuff is so good it should come with a warning label.
The whole cold-melty thing is actually my major problem with Cookie Dough, the cookies hold the cold better than the ice cream does, so you can’t get the cookie dough warm up enough to really taste it without letting the ice cream turn to soup.