Diana's Banana Babies

Every now and then, I will do a paid post for a website or a product.  I always try to give my most honest opinion of that product within those posts.  Then every now and then, there is a product that I like so much that I just have to right about it, like when I read a book I love like "Rawhide Down."  Diana's banana babies is one of those products.

My family loves to snack.  My son and I like the same kind of snacks; Cheez Its, pretzels, and just about any kind of chip.  I also like to eat a lot of meat snacks like beef jerky.  It is rare, however, when Mrs. Dickster and I both want to snack on the same thing.  Diana's banana babies is a product that the two of us are currently addicted to, the dark chocolate variety in particular.

Diana's banana babies are chocolate covered frozen bananas that we have found in the ice cream novelty section of our local Giant food store.  They come in dark chocolate covered and milk chocolate covered.  We have been loving the dark chocolate ones, but we have yet to try the milk chocolate.  There is just something about the flavors of bananas and dark chocolate that taste great together.  The coldness of the frozen treat is a great way to beat the heat. 

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Cicada Ice Cream

Image via Wikipedia

The restaurant patron called his server over and asked, "Waiter!  What is this fly doing in my soup?"  The waiter looks down and replies dryly, "The backstroke, sir."  Yeah, I know it is an old joke, but it helps set up this post.

I hate the thought of any kind of insect in my food.  One time, while drinking a glass of wine, I felt something in my mouth.  A fly had landed in the wine and when I took a swig, it ended up in my mouth.  Needless to say, I could not finish that particular glasss of wine.

Now, I know that in some parts of the world, some insects are considered a delicacy.  I have heard of folks eating chocolate covered ants.  Grasshoppers and crickets can be prepared a number of different ways.  The thought has no appeal to me and to be perfectly honest, grosses me out.

Back in February, I talked about an ice cream shop that had created an ice cream recipe made from human breast milk.  The thought of having ice cream made from breast milk didn't exactly make me want to give it a try.  However, given my prediliction against insects in my food, this next ice cream variety may top it in the gross out factor.

Sparky's Homemade Ice Cream shop in Columbia, MO has developed a variety of ice cream made with cicadas.  The cicadas were boiled and then covered in brown sugar and milk chocolate and then added to a brown sugar and butter ice cream base.  The first batch sold out the first day.

Sadly for Sparky's their success is over before it ever got started.  A local health department official has asked them to no longer use the cicadas as an ingredient because the food safety guidelines do not have any rules regarding how to safely prepare cicadas for consumption.

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Breast Milk Ice Cream

Image via WikipediaI love ice cream.  It has always been a weakness of mine.  It is nothing for me to polish off an entire pint of ice cream in one sitting.  I love all kinds of ice cream and just about any flavor.  It's all good.  I think my favorite flavor of ice cream is Ben & Jerry's Chubby Hubby.  Of course, Baskin & Robbins has another of my all time favorite flavors in their Baseball Nut ice cream.

I love ice cream so much that one year my wife and my son gave me the Ben & Jerry's Homemade Ice Cream & Dessert Cookbook and an ice cream maker.  Over the years, that machine has gotten a good bit of use.  Sometimes I would use the recipes in the cookbook and other times I adjusted the base recipe with some of my own creations.  Once I made Mango ice cream with fresh mangoes and another time a coffee based ice cream with chocolate covered almonds.

As adventurous as I would get in my ice cream sampling and creations, I also have to admit that for the most part I am not a very adventurous eater.  My wife complains that I need to be more willing to try different types of foods.  I get a little squeamish at the thought of eating certain foods.  I will not go into a lot of the details of what those things are.  I am so squeamish that sometimes the thought of eating certain foods would make me gag.

As is my custom, during my commute yesterday I was listing to talk radio on 630WMAL here in the DC area.  During one of the news breaks between segments of the show I was listening they alluded to the story of a shop in London that was selling an ice cream made with human breast milk.  The concoction is being sold under the flavor "Lady Gaga." I haven't fully decided how I feel about this, but I am leaning towards the squeamish side. 

It is not that I am squeamish about the idea of human breast milk per se.  After all, I was breast fed as a baby.  However, breast milk is meant for babies.  There is something a tad unsavory in the idea of a woman having her breast milk harvested for some purpose other than the feed a baby.  If the thought of an ice cream isn't enough to turn you off from trying "Lady Gaga," the price might be.  It is being sold at the premium price of approximately $23 per scoop.  That is a lot of Chubby Hubby.

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