I felt like an addict

A couple of weeks ago, a friend made some homemade ice cream using the Cuisinart ice cream maker. It served as the trigger to my completely obsessive, irrational behavior that only surfaces around food. I am a true fat-girl at heart. If it were up to will power alone, I would never eat anything healthy--I would drown myself in a bath of homemade ice cream and then proceed to eat my way out of it, savouring every last bite.

So after my friend served this fabulous homemade ice cream, I began obsessing. First, I began by obsessing over how good it tasted. Then, I obsessed over the ease in which Cuininart takes simple ingredients and turns it into heavenly ice cream. Then I moved along to rationalization. My internal dialogue went something like: "you could make chemical free ice cream whenever you want...it would be nice for summer....kid #1's birthday is coming up, you could use it for that...you could use it for work, it could be a tax right-off...."

That went on in my head for about a week, until my downfall. On our way back from berry picking last week, I swung into the local Macy's. Dirty, berry stained kids in tow....we looked like a lost episode of Beverly Hillbillies. We purchased our "golden" ice cream maker, and coveted it all the way home.

Everything was going well until yesterday. I had made a few different ice creams and a sorbet for my pops for Fathers Day. No big deal. More ice cream than I would normally eat, but it was new and still novel.

Then yesterday happened.

I told the kids we would make some ice cream. All we had to do was go to the local store and buy some cream and vanilla (I had used it all in the previous batch). Cream and vanilla...no big deal. I should point out my two caveats, 1. It must be organic cream and not from a factory farm, and 2. I want vanilla without alcohol. Even with my my two concessions, this should not be a big deal . We live next to a huge grocery store in a heavily populated suburb in California. The kids and I walk in, and they immediately start yelling:

Kids: We want to sit in the car carts
me: no carts, we are just running in.
kids: we want to sit in the car carts!
me: no. be quiet.
kids: WE WANT TO SIT IN THE CAR CARTS!
I whisper a quiet threat, which I will not repeat.

We get over to the "health food isle" and I grab the Strauss cream, and then over to the vanilla. Even the organic vanilla was expelled w/ alcohol. 5 brands of vanilla all with alcohol. Some even had corn syrup added. so GROSS! Irritated, I looked down, and that's when I realized that the cream had EXPIRED. Really frustrated, I went back to the cream and sure enough every bottle of Strauss had expired. Now I'm really irritated. I decide to get regular factory farmed organic cream when I noticed they were either out or they didn't carry any. Plus I still needed to solve my vanilla issue.

Completely frustrated, hot, and seriously annoyed at this so-called "premium store," but undeterred from our ice cream-making-mission, we pile back into the minivan and head to the next grocery store.

That's when it hit me...a little voice...my inner skinny person..."WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING? obsessing and dragging your kids all over town in pursuit of homemade ice cream....you have a PROBLEM!"

Thankfully, I am rational enough to listen to imaginary voices. I turned the car around, went home and packed up the ice cream maker.

Today, I drove it back to Macy's.

me: I want to return this ice cream maker
Macy's girl: Did it not work properly?
me: Something like that.

Good riddance.