My editor-in-chief, the great R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr., was on the short guest list for Charles and Camilla's state dinner at the White House the other night. The published menu included this gem: chartreuse ice cream. It was an eye chart-reuse moment before I could absorb the words.
Will one of you sophisticates please help out a Miami rube: what the bleep is chartreuse ice cream?
It reminds me of my old student days in Tallahassee. We had a Chinese buffet with a soft serve dispenser. The texture was perfect, but it had virtually no flavor, certainly not vanilla. We came to refer to the dessert as "white ice cream." Maybe this ice cream is the same. No flavor, but a color!
ReplyDeleteYou don't need a sophisticate, Jay, you need a drunkard. So obviously I'll step up to the plate. Chartreuse is a liqueur flavored with oranges and hyssop. I believe the color is named for the liqueur, rather than the other way 'round. It's called Chartreuse because it's made by monks at the Chartreuse monastery in France.
ReplyDeleteHunter: re "white ice cream." My husband spent the first five years of our youngest daughter's life as a stay-at-home dad, but I still did most of the food-related chores. One day at work I received a panicked call from John, who was attempting to deal with a lunchtime tantrum revolving around a non-negotiable demand for "black ketchup." Five virtual dollars to the first RC reader who figures that one out.
ReplyDeleteI'm going with a dark barbecue sauce. In the alternative, I'm thinking chocolate syrup.
ReplyDeleteSo some poor alcoholic lost his recovery on the ice cream... Well, tomorrow is the first day of the rest of your life... One day at a time...
ReplyDeleteHunter, I grew up in Brooklyn and ate tons of "white ice cream" as a kid. What a great line - too bad we didn't think of it!
ReplyDeleteI'm going with a dark barbecue sauce.
ReplyDeleteHunter, Anne and I are both Hoosiers. In Indiana, BBQ sauce is ketchup.
Great one, Kathy. I once dated a Minnesota girl. Her relatives loaned me a book on speaking Minnesotan.
ReplyDeleteDefinition of a taco (pronounced tack-O): Piece of white bread filled with ground hamburger and ketchup and then folded over.
Apparently, ketchup is salsa, too.
Could it be molasses?
ReplyDeleteAlright, Kathy. Give it up. What's the black ketchup? I'll take a final stab at soy sauce.
ReplyDeleteI'll take a final stab at soy sauce.
ReplyDeleteHunter shoots, Hunter scores! I thought I had it figured out when I remembered we'd been to one of those mall food court pseudo-Chinese places where the soy sauce comes in little plastic packets just like the ketchup. But then she started calling ranch dressing "white ketchup" and my theory went out the window.
Please place that virtual five dollars in my virtual account. I'll probably virtually never spend it.
ReplyDelete