30 Days With a Grateful Heart: With a Cherry On Top

Day 21/30: Decadance

While I try to keep the ratio of health to indulgent eating on the up and up, now and then a girl’s gotta live a little. Besides, pleasure is a very necesssary factor in living a happy life. While everything in moderation is an excellent philosophy in general, there is a time an place for everything, even the occasional vacation from sensible eating.

When I decide its time to abandon reason and surrender to my primal instincts in search of a good time, you’ll likely find me having my way with an ice cream cone. There was a time when sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll would have trumped a trip to the ice cream parlor, but those days are gone. At least, they are on hold at this point in my life. For now, food, food, glorious food is my number one vice.

Here are a few of my favorite ways to spoil my diet in Austin:

• Deep Fried Deviled Eggs at Lucy’s – These things are stupid delicious. They sound kind of horrendous, I’ll give you that, but don’t knock ’em till you’ve tried ’em. The spicy yolks and crunchy breading knock it out of the park. They even come with dipping sauce!
• Ice Cream Cones at Cow Tipping Creamery – Let’s be clear, these aren’t just regular cones. The folks at Cow Tippng Creamey do it up, coating your cones or sundaes with some seriously decedant and creative toppings. Lemon curd, nutella, peanut butter pretzels, ritz crackers, you name it…
• Buffalo Tofu at Wheatsville – I’d like to kid myself and say that because it’s tofu it’s really still health food, but that would just be a lie. This stuff is way to good to be health food. In fact, I think that I like it better than I ever liked buffalo chicken.
• Peanut Butter Cookie Shakes at Sonic – I’m not too proud to admit that I’ve succumbed to this styrafoam siren more than once. The first time I ordered one of these it was like getting kicked in the face by angels, sweet, crispy nutter butter angels.

More than anything else, ice cream is my drug of choice. I’ve never been a huge cake person, or even a big candy or chocolate eater. While I do enjoy a good cookie now and then, ice cream is the only sweet I simply cannot resist. I even love making it. I dream of opening my own ice cream shop one day, but that dream is usually dampened by the realization that I’d probably die fro diabetes if I were left on my own with that volume of ice cream. Trouble.

For now, I’ll just have to settle for the occasional homemade batch. I get a little experimental with my ice cream recipes. These are my favorites.