Giant Peanut Butter Chocolate Gelato

[New for 2017] I did a post a little while ago about a new Culinary Tours gelato that looked like an in house brand but I forgot to search the pint for who made it. A week later I spied similar flavors popping up at Stop & Shop (Giant) and I now know who makes them. The funny thing is that it's not really a secret because the bottom of plastic pint container is branded with "GS GELATO". Yup, looks like our old pals are keeping themselves busy (Nick really enjoyed several samples from them way back in 2013).

Giant Peanut Butter Chocolate Gelato

peanut butter gelato with a creamy peanut butter swirl
and chocolate peanut butter cups

Chick-fil-A Peach Milkshake and the Nosh Show Episode 105

Happy Memorial Day Nosh Show Listeners! Episode 105 is now live and it's all about upcoming treats that JunkBanter and @CandyHunting saw at the 2017 Sweet & Snacks Expo. Several of the items are spicy so you can probably guess how I will vote on those. Give the show a listen, maybe while you are drinking my sip (and nosh) of the week: the returning Chick-fil-A Peach Milkshake and the new smokehouse bbq bacon sandwich.

Chick-fil-A Peach Milkshake

Jeeg has now been to Hy-vee... have you?

Recently our podcasting buddy Jeeg from the Nerd Lunch podcast moved to Minnesota which means he now gets to shop at Hy-vee. Knowing that I'm a grocery geek, he kindly sent over a few shots from the freezer aisle. It can be easy to forget that our local freezer aisle is part of a much larger stage of frozen treats. Let's take a quick look at a few things you might not usually see.

The coolest find has to be Whitey's Sgt. Camo Ice Cream. It's graham cracker and marshmallow ice cream with a ribbon of Whitey's famous fudge. That sounds amazing to a graham fanatic such as myself. In fact, I think I've heard of either Whitey's or this flavor in particular before. If any has tried Whitey's, let us know in the comments. Now, what else do they have?

Ciao Bella Baileys Sea Salt Caramel Gelato

[New for 2017] I was trying to scope out something to show the new 2017 Ciao Bella pint designs when I came across a new flavor. Let's dig in to...

Ciao Bella Baileys Sea Salt Caramel Gelato

gelato with the taste of Baileys Original Irish Cream Liquer & sea salt caramel

Blue Bunny Mint Cookie Crunch Ice Cream

[New for 2017] Blue Bunny is treating us to several new flavors this year but unfortunately I've had more luck tracking down the new snacks lineup than I have their new container flavors. Hopefully I will get to most of them in time, but for now we are going to start with....

Blue Bunny Mint Cookie Crunch Ice Cream

mint ice cream, fudge swirls, mint chocolate cookie chunks

Friendly's Naturally Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream

[New for 2017, Discontinued] Alright, time to push a review to the front of the line because a few of you have been asking me how this new "Naturally" Friendly's line is. Well, it's terrible. I'm not holding back here because there is no reason for it's terrible texture. This will be the only Naturally flavor I review this year. Yes, I really think it's that undeserving of your attention.

Naturally Friendly's Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream

peppermint ice cream and semisweet chocolate chips

Ben & Jerry's Bob Marley's One Love Ice Cream

[New for May 2017] I will admit that I actually saw this pint at another store two days ago but was weary of dumping five bucks on a pint of banana ice cream. Well, I went in to Target this morning and while I didn't find Keep Calm and Caramel On, I did find this on sale for $3.50.

Ben & Jerry's Bob Marley's One Love Ice Cream

banana ice cream with
caramel & graham cracker swirls & fudge peace signs

Walgreen's Cookie Butter Ice Cream

[New for...  late 2016?] I ran in to Walgreen's looking for Nosh Show fodder. Disappointed not to find anything, I took the long way out of the store, past the ice cream, when I saw...

Walgreen's Cookie Butter Ice Cream

vanilla ice cream with cookie butter bits
and graham cracker crumbs with a cookie butter swirl

White Fudge Ding Dongs, MTN DEW-S-A, Caramel M&M's and The Nosh Show Ep104

Hello Nosh Show listeners! Episode 104 is live and ready for listening. My nosh of the week is going to be the surprisingly enjoyable white fudge ding dongs, but what else will we talk about?

Hostess White Fudge Ding Dong Sundae

Perry's Lactose Free Cookie Dough Ice Cream

[New for 2017] So Perry's sent over free samples of several new 2017 products and one of them happens to be lactose free (aka mixed with Lactase enzyme). The thing is, I don't think I've had the regular version so I won't be comparing the two.

Perry's Lactose Free Cookie Dough Ice Cream

99% lactose free cookie dough ice cream
with chunks of cookie dough and fudge chips

Haagen-Dazs Espresso Chocolate Cookie Crumble

[By Nick, New for 2017] Hey everyone! Today marks 5 years Dubba has put up with my nonsense. While I haven't been able to write as much as I'd like to recently, I still love seeing all of your comments. Looking back on when I started, I never thought I would've lasted this long. Dubba has become one of my best friends and I couldn't thank him enough for all he has done for me. I'd also like to thank you all. You've all given me a confidence that I never quite had before. Your feedback has helped me not only grow as a writer but as an individual. I've learned a lot in the past 5 years and hopefully great things will be coming in the near future. Onward to the review!

Haagen-Dazs Espresso Chocolate Cookie Crumble Ice Cream

coffee ice cream swirled with cookie crumbles
and sprinkled with chocolate espresso flakes

Coolhaus Salty S'mores Ice Cream

Coolhaus isn't new to the blog, but all of the past reviews have been written by Nick. In the fall I realized that Shaws was starting to carry their products and now Wegmans and Price Chopper is too. PC only had four flavors Friday night, but one of the them was just too hard to resist.

Coolhaus Salty S'mores Ice Cream

aka Julia S'more-gan
salted Tahitian vanilla bean ice cream,
graham cookie butter marshmallow swirl & dark chocolate squares
(new 2017 name is Campfire S'mores)

State of the Freezer Address - 9 Years Edition

Hey everyone! I had every intention of writing a nice long post about my anniversary but unfortunately the fates aligned and it's now past my bedtime and I need to get going. I could blame my poison ivy or the increased workload from my boss being out of town, but that's just the tip of the ice cream berg. (I'm so tired, I literally wrote cream instead of berg).

This is the chest freezer as best I could arrange it and if the choices look lopsided, well, price chopper was having a good sale on both Turkey Hill and Ben & Jerry's. The upstairs freezer isn't much to look at right now.

Just know that I appreciate all of you who have stuck with me all of these years and hopefully I'll add some more words to this in the morning. Good night!

----------------------

Hello! I'm back! For those wondering what else is in the freezer (aka the review queue): More Gelato Fiasco samples! More Perry's samples! also Friendly's reviews (one of which will be nice and negative), and at least two Blue Bunny reviews though hopefully more if I can find a good place to get their new flavors.

Keeping an eye on my instagram account will hopefully give you a heads up about what's coming down the review pipe though technically you can follow on twitter or tumblr if you prefer those platforms (Facebook is just used for when reviews go live but sometimes uses my instagram photos for the links). My anniversary post on instagram pushed me over 3000 followers so that was a pretty cool anniversary present.

As for an update on the 2017 ice cream season, well, it's looking kind of over from this side of the aisle. If you check the product guide, you'll see that I've already covered most of what I wanted to cover at this point. I think I've mentioned before that I'm not spending money on stuff I know I will most likely hate, so anything with booze, coconut, or coffee basically. In the past I may have tried to cover them anyway but what's the point really?

That said, I don't know what the rest of the year has in store for OSS. Website traffic is down over 20% for the second year in a row which means that the site is now running below 2012 traffic levels. I don't do this for the traffic, I do it for the love of the industry, but that hurts. An old fashion blog about ice cream, no matter how long lived, just doesn't fit as well in our modern picture-based smartphone society. I kind of think that the website needs to have an accompanying app but who knows if I can pull that off (though I do have a rough idea in my mind of what I would like it to do).

Oh, one more thing, always remember to be awesome to each other, this includes being nice to the ice cream companies. I worry very much that we live in a world where we think every flavor from a company should be designed to suit our specific needs but we are all very different people. Going forward (and for the last several months), I've been trying to reinforce the difference between a good product and a product that clicks with me. I don't know if I'm doing a very good job with this mission, but I will keep working on it. I've learned a lot in the last nine years but that doesn't mean the battle to be a better reviewer will ever end. (hey, no snide remarks about my writing not improving in 9 years).

Ok, be well and scoop on!

Would you try Peach Guava Gelato?

So who out there shops at Big Y? We happened to be in Connecticut briefly and as always, I couldn't resist a tour of the freezer aisle. I saw a few neat things like the new Humboldt pints, High Road ice cream, Vice Cream and even local players Shady Glen and The Farmer's Cow. What caught my attention more than anything though were these cleverly labeled gelato pints.

Culinary Tours Gelato - Click for bigger view

Talenti Cinnamon Peach Biscuit Gelato #44

[2017-2018] So there are four new Talenti flavors this year, #44 through #47, but instead of 44 popping up with the rest of the new flavors, it patiently waited for the formerly Publix exclusive Peach Butter Biscuit to be distributed around the country first. Technically #43 came out after 38-42 last year, so maybe that's just the way Talenti likes to tease consumers.

Talenti Cinnamon Peach Biscuit Gelato #44

cinnamon sugar gelato with peach butter swirl and crunchy cookie pieces

Friendly's Peanut Butter Fudge Signature Sundae

[New for 2017] For a long time, Friendly's has made sundae cups. While the branding and flavor options have changed over the years, the size is basically the same... until now! Friendly's is dishing up four humongous sundaes in clear containers. You see, while their gummy "all natural" line up is going after Turkey Hill, this line up seems to be going after Breyers "gelato".

Friendly's Peanut Butter Fudge Signature Sundae

vanilla ice cream with peanut butter, topped with fudge,
whipped topping and chopped peanut butter cups

The Nosh Show Episode 103

Hello Nosh Show Listeners! How are you doing? The bad news is that we still miss Eric, but the good news is that it wasn't just the three of us this week. That's right, we are four once more. Will hilarity ensue? What will we chew? Do I live in a shoe?? Will I stop rhyming before I turn blue?

Hostess Apple Streusel Coffee Cakes