Embrace

I wasn't a big ice cream fan. They're not thirst-quenching. Ice, of all variants, is supposed to quench thirst. For me it was more like a sweet cold meal. And most of them come in small quantities. A couple of years ago, a friend bought me an alarmingly small cup of strawberry ice cream at some fancy parlour. The reddish thing with bits of strawberries in it was tagged at thirty grands. Ridiculous. Of course, I didn't tell him that.

This afternoon, however, I developed an unusual craving for ice cream. So when the ice cream truck passed by I flagged it down and ask the man for 'a liter of something good'. In exchange for six dollars, he gave me a container of something called Embrace, which according to the label translated into 'choc coffee almond swirl'. The surface was so pretty with off-white ice cream and dark brown chocolate coating in a pattern that closely resembled a submarine propeller. Plus a liberal amount of chopped almond scattered here and there. I stared for a full minute before resolving to stab my spoon at it.

What followed was a phenomenon many culinary expert recognized as a flavour explosion. Not a kaboom-there-goes-your-limbs explosion. Rather, it was subtle and elegant. Like the burst of ink deployed by a scared squid. I swore I could feel the chocolate and coffee swirled hand in hand like a pair of champion ballroom dancers in my tongue, stepping on my every taste bud to make sure that I knew they were good. It's chocolatylicious, coffeelicious, almondylicious. Delifuckinglicious.

The first spoonful sent me into an ice cream frenzy. Initially, I planned to be civilized and ate out of small bowl. But when I felt that scooping the ice cream into the bowl took what seemed like aeons I just dug in straight from the container. I didn't know where I was. The whole world turned mute. All I felt was this sensation of sheer grandeur in my mouth. Teasing, flirting, and bewitching like 19th century French courtesan. When I came to, I was halfway down the container. There went my resolution to a healthier life. I knew there was little I could do but surrender in its embrace. And dug in some more.