“Remoted” – Day 146 (Sunday)

Woo hoo! Forty days!

Sunday Family Funday! Coffee and day 40 of Finnish lessons, then it was off to my sister's house. There was a breakfast sendoff for my niece, who returned to Las Vegas later in the day. The menu was my sister’s specialty – biscuits and sausage gravy. Hers is the only version of it I’ll eat.

My introduction to the stuff was in Fort Worth in my early 20s. Mom’s stepsister Laura was very excited to treat me to a “Foat Wuth” night on the town. This involved time served in a honky tonk where I disliked the music and didn’t know any cowboy dances, which was comically and publicly revealed on the dance floor when a couple unsuspecting cowboys asked me to dance.

That long ago  night of honky tonk dancing turned out like most “out dancing” nights in New England at the time – with me awkwardly tending the precious table with the purses and drinks while my friends tore up the dance floor. The grand finale of the Fort Worth night was a restaurant where Laura ordered the plain gravy and biscuit for me, which she was convinced I was going to love. Unfortunately, even though I was late-night, been drinking beer hungry, I was still not impressed by this most egregious treatment of a good biscuit. Laura ate both of our biscuit and gravy orders that night, and I avoided the stuff for many years afterward. It’s definitely better with spicy sausage in it. It’s definitely better at my sister’s house. Maybe my taste buds finally matured.

After visiting with the family, it was time to go home, loaded with garden tomatoes from my sister’s. The Southern food day would continue with tomato pie. I had all the ingredients, but kept thinking about the multiple flavors of ice cream in my incomplete Hannaford experimental delivery shopping basket from Saturday, so a tiny detour was in order. The frozen food cooler offered up my favorite frozen pizza at a crazy low price, but it was a heaping helping of disappointment over at the ice cream cooler.

One serving in, and no
fudge cores to be found.

Hannaford’s, you let me down. There was no Edy’s Slow Churned Triple Core Salted Caramel. There was no Friendly’s Black Cherry Chocolate Chunk or Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia. There was no Limited Time Originals Pumpkin flavored ice cream. There was a heavy heart as I stared into the ice cream coolers. How was I to properly celebrate my 40 day Finnish streak? I settled for Hannaford brand Maple Walnut and Edy’s Triple Core Chocolate. Incidentally, the missing flavors still exist in my cyber shopping basket, so maybe there is a secret stash in the magical retail reservoir “out back.” Or the online ordering system has inventory flaws.

The disappointment continued at home upon opening the settled upon Edy’s flavor. There was a huge air pocket where roughly a half cup of ice cream should have been, and there are no triple cores of anything to be found. There is no sign of even a single core. It definitely did not look like the picture on the container. My 40-day language lesson ice cream celebration is lacking more than someone to celebrate with. At least the tomato pie came out ok.