Official Summer Ice Cream Survey Part I: New Jersey

Maeve recently spent a week with us in New Jersey to attend art camp with Nora at the Visual Arts Center. The girls share many things in addition to the special relationship that only cousins have. One of those things is a deep love of ice cream. I proposed that they taste-test ice cream at various locations in the area during the week and I would publish the results on my new blog. Though pre-adolescent, they found nothing to object to in this plan!

Ice cream was evaluated for creaminess, cone, texture, sweetness and toppings and rated based on the following scale:

1=marvelous

2=great

3=good

4=okay

5=poor

Our first stop was the new Home Plate Dairy on Route 57 in Stewartsville (former home of Custard's Last Stand, an entrepreneurial ice cream establishment that switched to deer processing in the winter months). Home Plate came highly recommended by Rachel and Gardner but could it pass muster with true experts in the field? Nora had a chocolate and vanilla twist in a wafer cone and Maeve had a twist in a waffle cone with chocolate crunch sprinkles. It became immediately clear that these were some tough critics. The overall score for Home Plate was only a 2.8/good with the highest marks a pair of twos for texture and sweetness.

The next stop was Ricky's on Springfield Avenue in Summit where Nora sampled Cake Batter ice cream in a cup with M&Ms, whipped cream and chocolate syrup and Maeve went for Rocky Road with whipped cream in a waffle cone. Ricky's has a free toppings bar and clearly they have cornered that market earning them a top score of 1/marvelous for both toppings and sweetness. "Okay" marks for the cone brought the total score to 2.2/great, sadly shy of the coveted "marvelous" ranking.

The last stop in Part 1 of this exhaustive survey was the one and only MF or Magic Fountain, also in Summit on Morris Avenue. Here Nora and Maeve both ordered Cookie Dough with Nora opting for a wafer cone and Maeve for a sugar cone. Our critics gave MF respectable marks of 2/great for creaminess, texture and sweetness but it did not excel in any areas and suffered from the same inferior cones as Home Plate and Ricky's. The overall score? A 2.5 bringing MF in squarely in between Ricky's and Home Plate.

The results:

1st place- Ricky's for its marvelous toppings and unparalleled sweetness

2nd place- Magic Fountain which is just plain great if you ignore the cones

3rd place- Home Plate Dairy just couldn't compete

Stay tuned as the girls continue their efforts and strive to maintain this rigorous schedule of tastings in the Official Ice Cream Survey Part II: Maine and the Official Ice Cream Survey Part III: The Hamptons!

http://www.candyconesandchaos.com/

Tito's is the Bomb!

I managed to escape the office to walk over to Tito's for lunch. So glad I did! It was a beautiful day all cool and sunny. I tried the southwestern chicken burrito special with pico de galo and it was perfect with green salsa from the free salsa bar and a squeeze of lime. Unfortunately the town was overrun with roving bands of preppy middle school bubble-dwellers. It must be the last day of school in Summit. But I made my way over to a park bench and enjoyed the feast accompanied by a bottle of Calypso lemonade and surrounded by nannies, their charges and Latinos lounging in the sun. If I can figure out how to download pix from my cell phone (Thibault????) I'll post them. I forgot my camera.

http://titosburritos.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/sssleestak

Lovin' the Juice Caboose

I stopped by the Juice Caboose in Summit yesterday to grab lunch and say hello to cousin Steve Clark. I left with a #4 a.k.a. "Re-Fuel" (I beleive). I was quickly drawn to that name on a Friday that signaled the end of another excruciatingly long week. It was fabulously filled with orange, lemon, carrot and ginger juices and made while I waited. What was the magic fifth ingredient? Accompanied by a small container of garlicky noodle salad and another of chickpea, it made for a really good and healthy meal. Yum.