The Big Muddy Ice Cream Blog

When I stopped at Whole Foods not too long ago and bought the Three Twins flavor I also picked up Ben & Jerry's S'mores flavor. I haven't had it in a long time because the only place that sells it in STL is Whole Foods and I never go there. So I used this opportunity to grab a pint. I've finished finals already aka I'M DONE WITH COLLEGE. So obv I used my free time to do research about Ben & Jerry's. Things I learned: Ben & Jerry's is owned by Unilever. Unilever bought B&J's 14 years ago, but 14 years ago I was 8 so this is news to me. I'm not terribly surprised that Ben & Jerry's isn't independent, but I kind of thought they might be. The story of the sale is pretty interesting. B&J's has been cast as the ultimate darling of independent social enterprise company. And some weird corporate law thingy forced them to sell out. "Oh dear, if B&J's can't survive, no one can!" was sort of the genera...

Today I tried Ben and Jerry's Rockin' Blondies, another Target Exclusive flavor.  This is described as "Buttery Brown Sugar Ice Cream with Blonde Brownies and Butterscotch Toffee Flakes." I picked up this ice cream at Target (obviously) for $3.99!!!  That is so cheap for a pint of B&J's!  I may have to buy ice cream here from now on. I was really really excited about this flavor, and thought it had a lot of potential.  From the description I was expecting a light, delicate, warm brown sugar flavor with gooey, chewy blondie chunks, but I was kind of disappointed.  To me, the ice cream did not taste at all like brown sugar.  If I really strained my tastebuds and tilted my head the right way I could pick up on a slight buttery flavor.  I could, however, taste the cream the ice cream was made out of, which was interesting because you don't often taste the 'cream' part of ice cream, it is often overwhelmed by the flavor.  While this was no...

On Easter Sunday I needed to go grocery shopping. Of course I didn't get my butt around to going until 5PM so Schnucks and Tracer Joe's were both closed. So I had to go to Whole Foods. I normally do not like shopping at Whole Foods. It is over priced and the company is against unions and the CEO thinks capitalism is going to save the world. Which is just... well... ANYWAY. Ice cream. While I was there I decided to go for some crazy ice cream brand that I couldn't get any where else. The bright green pints of Three Twins caught my eye. And then I saw it. Chocolate Orange Confetti. I freaking love chocolate oranges. Those and real oranges are Christmas stocking staples because I guess my parents think it is the Great Depression even though both of them were born decades after the Great Depression ended.  Three Twins seems like a pretty cool company. Small and organic and located in California and they use local milk and donate profits to conserve the rainforest and bl...

So this isn't ice cream, but Madeline talked about a froyo place in her introduction, so I'm just gonna say I think froyo is fair game. My St. Louis readers may remember the froyo place on Wydown called Chill. However, recently Chill closed down because the owners were moving to California. Now in its place is a new local chain called, Yo My Goodness. When I went the first time I had heard amazing things about their cake batter flavor. I'm not typically a fan of cake batter flavored ice creams and froyos, because in my opinion they often taste super artificial and not even really like cake batter. Despite my hesitations I tried the flavor. Oh. Em. Gee. This is good. The flavor is subtle and creamy and not artificial tasting at all. It tasted like licking the batter straight out of a mixing bowl. Seriously if a froyo could be life changing this would be it. My ice cream and other frozen dairy product consumption habits are a major part of my identity and before this I ...

Prepare yourselves! This is going to be a long post.  My wonderful French Horn and high school marching band teacher asked if I would review Graeter's ice cream on the blog.  This is a new-to-me brand based in Cincinnati, Ohio. I *think* I've seen Graeter's in grocery store freezers before and not bought any because I was kind of turned off by the name.  Graeter's is a good, German last name and there's no reason it should bring anything to mind other than delicious dessert, but to me Graeter's sounds like it should be the name of a dive bar. I looked on Graeter's website,  http://www.graeters.com/ , to see where I could buy this ice cream in Minneapolis, and the most convenient place for me was the Whole Foods in downtown Minneapolis.  I went in on Thursday night after a dance class, skipped over to the freezers, found the Graeter's and then froze when I saw the price.  I was planning to pick up a pint of the Black Raspberry Chocolate Chip, Graeter...

This was the core flavor that I was most skeptical about. Not that I don't love raspberries or jam or chocolate or anything, but I just didn't know how I felt about jam in  my ice cream. But a detour about B&J's first. So the core flavors were the first flavors to be both Fair Trade Certified and non-GMO. The fair trade part is super cool and I'm all about it. Maybe I'll talk more about another post. But today I want to talk about GMOs. Ben & Jerry's generally has an anti-GMO stance and is pro the mandatory labeling of GMOs (http://www.benjerry.com/values/issues-we-care-about/our-stance-on-gmo and http://www.benjerry.com/values/issues-we-care-about/our-stance-on-gmo/our-non-gmo-standards). Now I can be down with mandatory labeling. It doesn't hurt people to know what they are eating. Maybe it would confuse some people and some people would stop buying GMOs for the wrong reasons, but I still support the labeling movement. But I'm not as anti-GMO...

I have been seeing the Haagen-Dazs Pomegranate Dark Chocolate Bars in the grocery stores since at least November or December of last year.  Every time I went to the grocery store I would stop and stare at these and think about bringing them home with me, but would inevitably decide to buy a pint of ice cream instead.  At one point I even took a picture to send to my boyfriend who loves everything pomegranate flavored.  Seriously, he has a problem.  Last week I finally picked up a box.  I figured since it was a limited edition I'd better do it before they went away forever.  Actually, these are not listed on the Haagen-Dazs website so they may not be making them anymore.  In that case GO OUT AND BUY ALL OF THEM YOU CAN FIND!  Either that or Haagen-Dazs hasn't updated their website in a really long time.  I did notice that there are new, supposedly permanent Haagen-Dazs gelato flavors not listed online.  I'm not a huge ice cream b...

Okay wow. I promise, soon I'll review something other than B&J's.  I just really like their ice cream and I like them as a company. Their environmental and social policies are great. For example, their living wage policy is pretty cool. They have their own calculation for a living wage for their Vermont factory full-time employees. They made $16.13 an hour in 2013 (source: http://www.benjerry.com/values/how-we-do-business/livable-wages ). Pretty cool. However, I learned something kind of sad about B&J's doing the research for this post. They used to have a policy that the highest paid employee couldn't make more than 5 times as much as the lowest paid employee. I like this policy better because it holds the company accountable on both ends of the spectrum, keeping people out of poverty and the 1%. Unfortunately they got rid of this policy in 1995. I don't know how I thought they still had it, lol. Apparently the company had to abandon the policy because ...

Last Tuesday, April 8th was free cone day at Ben & Jerry's! I am a huge B&J's fan, but this was my first time going to free cone day. The Ben & Jerry's in St. Louis (yeah there is only one) is on the Delmar Loop, which is a super fun street with lots of cool restaurants and shops. It is also considered one of the best 10 streets in the nation. The line for free cone day was out the door and way down the street. It was a gorgeous April day, which honestly are rare in St. Louis. For example, today it was 40 degrees and sleeting, joy. We, me my roommate Bronwyn and our neighbor/friend Lizzie, get to the back of the line and only wait for a few minutes before a B&J's worker comes back and starts shouting about trivia to win a front of the line pass. I didn't even know those were a thing! Obviously we are excited because we are huge B&J fans (as evidenced below) and we knew we have a good chance of winning.  The first question was, "Ben and Jer...

I'm a first year graduate student in the math PhD program at the University of Minnesota, and I have a big, important pre-lim exam tomorrow afternoon, so CLEARLY my number one priority right now is to write about ice cream.  Today I also cleaned the bathroom for the first time in weeks and practiced doing handstands, both of which HAD to be done TODAY because reasons. This week I tried the Target-exclusive Ben and Jerry's flavor Peanut Butter Jam Session.  This is described as Peanut Butter Ice Cream with a crunchy Peanut Butter Swirl and a Raspberry Swirl. I love peanut butter, it is one of my favorite foods ever, and I often carry a jar around in my backpack for a quick snack.  Despite that, I was quite apprehensive about this flavor.  It's a non-traditional ice cream flavor, but that doesn't tend to scare me off (I'm on a quest to make or buy avocado ice cream, and just recently sampled a Roasted Garlic Almond Chip ice cream).  I think I imagined ...

Nutty Caramel Swirl is a Ben and Jerry's flavor exclusive to 7-Eleven. There is a 7-Eleven not too far from my apartment, but it is in the opposite direction from any grocery store, or really any where I ever go.  So I rarely pick up this flavor.  Before I picked it up, I had actually only had it once, when they first released the flavor. But I'd really been craving it, so the other day when I already had a bunch of errands to run, I decided to just tack another one on! The pint was about $5.50. A little pricey, even for B&J's. Excitement level: High! I remember really liking it last time I had it. The Ice Cream: Nougat Ice Cream with Peanuts, Fudge Flakes and a Salty Caramel Swirl. Okay yes, so basically I think they are trying to do a Snicker's Bar ice cream. Ben and Jerry's are known for their chunks, but with this one they really out do themselves.  There are TONS of peanuts and fudge flakes. But normally with B&J's there are big chunks a...

Trader Joe's is a great place for speciality ice cream snacks. Fun ice cream sandwiches, vegan ice creams, even vegan ice cream sandwiches, mochi ice cream, the works! But this trip, I wanted bang for my buck so I picked up their Peanut Butter Tracks, which my roommate Katy loves. The quart was about $4 or $5, I don't totally remember.  Either way it's not a bad deal. Excitement level: moderate. You can't go wrong with peanut butter cups. You just can't. They are always good. The ice cream: I learned a lesson, never underestimate Trader Joe's. I didn't really look at the description of the flavor before I bought it. As I opened the quart I read the description, "Vanilla ice cream with mini peanut butter cups & a caramel swirl." What's that? A CARAMEL SWIRL? In a peanut butter cup ice cream? Bold move TJ's, bold move. I've seen fudge swirls and peanut butter swirls with peanut butter cup ice cream but never caramel. I was hon...

Hello Internet! If you’ve stumbled upon this blog, hopefully you love ice cream just as much as I do or if not, maybe my lyrical prose extolling the joy and beauty of ice cream will help you love ice cream as much as I do. I also hope you like sarcasm as much as I do. My sister has already explained to you a bit about why we are embarking on this project. However, it is not just the Big Muddy that has connected to two of us, but our love of ice cream. For me, I hope this blog serves as a way for Madeline and I to stay in touch via the world of ice cream as the real world often keeps us very busy. Now some more about me. Growing up in St. Louis has turned me into a connoisseur for frozen dairy products, especially frozen custard. The best frozen custard in the world obviously being Ted Drewes (https://www.facebook.com/TedDrewes). However, in college at Washington University in St. Louis, my roommates and I fell in love with Ben and Jerry’s because we love ice cream with...

This week I ventured to Target to pick up the Talenti Hazelnut gelato, a flavor exclusive to Target stores.  I tend to avoid Target because I always fall into the trap of, "Ooh, I'll just look through the clearance section to see if I can find a sweater for 5 bucks."  This turns in to, "I might as well just look at ALL of the clothes .... er mah gerd this super cute dress is only 30 dollars er mah gerd!  But I'm too lazy to try it on, I'll just do it at home."  And then I get home and it doesn't quite fit and I have to return the dress.  And the cycle repeats ad infinitum.  I really should learn that nothing from Target will ever fit, but I swear they must pipe mind-numbing happy gas through the store. Anyway, I picked up the gelato which was ~$5 (about normal for a pint of Talenti). Excitement level:  Super duper excited.  I love hazelnut and I love Talenti. The Gelato: This is hazelnut in a vanilla base not in a chocolate base like Nu...

Hello World! My name is Madeline and I love ice cream.  I've decided that I need to join the rest of my navel-gazing and self-important generation and share my love of ice cream with you, the world.  Hence the creation of the Big Muddy Ice Cream Blog. Now, dear reader, you may ask, "Why the Big Muddy?"  My sister Lizzy and I will co-author this blog.  We are from St. Louis, Missouri, the home of Chuck Berry, the St. Louis Arch, and Provel cheese.  I currently live in Minneapolis, Minnesota the home of never-ending winter and snow in April.  The Mississippi River, aka the Big Muddy, connects us. The most important thing you need to know about me is my favorite brand of ice cream.  It is, hands down, Ben and Jerry's.  The flavor selection!  The chunks!  Ben and Jerry's is followed closely by Haagen Dazs.  Haagen Dazs has some truly amazing and unparalleled flavors like Caramel Cone and White Chocolate Raspberry Truffle, but is ...