Postcards from New Zealand: Day Sixty-Four

Home alone with a sprained ankle and feeling very sorry for myself, I wanted nothing more than ice cream. I wanted a pint Ben & Jerry's, with more nuts and chunks and fudge ripples than actual ice cream, and I wanted to eat the entire thing from the container while I sat with my foot up on ice and watched a dreadful movie on our tiny TV set. So, I limped my way to the car, and drove two blocks to the dairy. The options were grim. There was no Ben & Jerry's, no Häagen-Dazs, no nothing in a pint, in fact, except for some generic gelato. There were some equally generic tubs of foamy stuff, and two freezers full of brightly packaged ice creams on sticks, none of which were appealing. I settled on something I'd seen advertised, which is a block of vanilla ice cream, one-half sandwiched between two not-very-chocolatey biscuits, and one-half dipped in milk chocolate and ground almonds. I ate it in the car and found it rather dissatisfactory.