Bon Bon Ice Cream



100.  Bon Bon

Inspired by the Book of 1000 Awesome Things, I have started a list of my own 100 Things of Awesomeness.  Coming in first on my list has to be this special seasonal treat.  We have been eating Peppermint Candy Ice Cream since we were kids, and now I have my own kids hooked on it.  It's like the new Christmas orange.  Do you remember, looong ago, when it was such a treat to have those special Christmas oranges?  They were small and so sweet, and always came wrapped in that green tissue paper.  And then, they started to become called Japanese oranges, and they were still special, and the most expensive ones (always at your friend's house) were wrapped in white tissue paper.  You still had to wade through seeds back then, even on the white paper-wrapped ones.  But now, you can get them anywhere almost any time of the year.  The "special" has long disappeared for me, and that's exactly what makes Bon Bon so special for us; if you blink, you miss it, for a whole year!

Our tradition is to call Peppermint Candy Ice Cream in our house "Bon Bon"--from the francais-langue side of the carton, and somehow--unbelievably--we missed out on it last year.  I can't figure out why other than that we traveled away for the days before Christmas, and that I detest shopping after work on those crazy last days before the Christmas break.  You can imagine my sheer delight yesterday, when rounding the corner passed the produce isle and toward the cocoa powder, I saw it.  It was on one of those end-of-the-isle displays, and I would like to say that I caught a glimpse of it out of the corner of my eye.  But, I didn’t.  I saw it a mile away, and it was like time and all noise stopped, the clouds opened, and a beam of light came straight from heaven and shone, golden, on our Bon Bon. 

A bit dramatic?  Yes, but that is really how I felt.  You see, you can’t just find this ice cream anywhere, and you can’t just get it anytime.  That is why it is so special.  It gets to be one of those small little pleasures—all creamy and minty, always with the chance of getting a small piece of peppermint candy in any spoonful—that we so look forward to every year.  My wife and I because it was a special treat when we were kids, and my kids because they see that it was a special treat from back in the olden days when mom and dad were little (if that could have ever happened!).  My grocery store is the only one that seems to sell it, and it comes from Island Farms, that wonderful dairy on Vancouver Island.  Thank you Island Farms, I don’t know what I would do without you (and I will give you a second shout out in the summer when I go back to my hometown to the only ice cream parlour that still sells your cherry custard!).

And the best part of this story?  It was on sale.  $8.99, cut down to $5.99 a carton with your membership card.  I have a membership card, so guess what?  I bought two.

There was no way I was missing out this year!