Jump to content
  • Welcome to the eG Forums, a service of the eGullet Society for Culinary Arts & Letters. The Society is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization dedicated to the advancement of the culinary arts. These advertising-free forums are provided free of charge through donations from Society members. Anyone may read the forums, but to post you must create a free account.

The Ben & Jerry's Topic


SteveW

Recommended Posts

I used to work at Ben and Jerry's years ago and had all these flavors at my finger tips, as much as I wanted. At the time I was training to run a marathon, so I never gained any weight!

My favorites used to be/are: Coconut Almond Fudge Chip, Chocolate Fudge Brownie and Dilbert's Totally Nuts. Another under-rated favorite of mine was Vanilla Caramel Fudge Swirl.

During the downtimes we'd experiment with mixing a lot of different flavors in shakes and double dip combos. I created a Chunky Monkey/Pistachio milk shake that was unbeleiveable! Those were the days...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I used to work at Ben and Jerry's years ago and had all these flavors at my finger tips, as much as I wanted.  At the time I was training to run a marathon, so I never gained any weight!

My favorites used to be/are: Coconut Almond Fudge Chip, Chocolate Fudge Brownie and Dilbert's Totally Nuts.  Another under-rated favorite of mine was Vanilla Caramel Fudge Swirl. 

During the downtimes we'd experiment with mixing a lot of different flavors in shakes and double dip combos.  I created a Chunky Monkey/Pistachio milk shake that was unbeleiveable!  Those were the days...

If I could work 8 hours a day at B&J and 8 hours at a library, I surely wouldn't get rich but I'd be fat and happy. :smile::biggrin::laugh: Where did I go wrong?

"There is no sincerer love than the love of food."  -George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman, Act 1

 

"Imagine all the food you have eaten in your life and consider that you are simply some of that food, rearranged."  -Max Tegmark, physicist

 

Gene Weingarten, writing in the Washington Post about online news stories and the accompanying readers' comments: "I basically like 'comments,' though they can seem a little jarring: spit-flecked rants that are appended to a product that at least tries for a measure of objectivity and dignity. It's as though when you order a sirloin steak, it comes with a side of maggots."

 

"...in the mid-’90s when the internet was coming...there was a tendency to assume that when all the world’s knowledge comes online, everyone will flock to it. It turns out that if you give everyone access to the Library of Congress, what they do is watch videos on TikTok."  -Neil Stephenson, author, in The Atlantic

 

"In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual." -Galileo Galilei, physicist and astronomer

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I humby beg the forgiveness of the state of Nebraska.

I went grocery shopping this afternoon, and lo and behold....

They had Brownie Batter ice cream!!!!

I just had my first spoonfuls (it's now safely back in the freezer) and I have to say

Oh. My. God.

That's all.

:wub:

Erin

"American by birth, Irish by the grace of God"

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My CEO-rejection Ben and Jerry's letter.

At the top is a photo of the two of them wearing tall Uncle Sam-style hats, but with icecream labels on them. Both of them are pointing their finger at me. Next to them is a stamp that says, "Official Rejection Letter"The heading of the letter says:

"WE ALMOST WANTED YOU, ( then my name) TO BE OUR CEO

Congratulations! You did a great job on your application for the position of CEO of Ben and Jerry's. It warms our hearts - and blows our minds - that someone of your high caliber would even consider a career with us.

Your impassioned eloquence, remarkable qualifications, and astonishing ability to consume premium ice cream and frozen yogurt convinced the search team to put your name near the top of our long short list.

What a rich, fulfilling life you've lead! And what an appetite!

That said, it is with mixed ingredients that we give you the bad news and the good news. The bad news is that you didn't get the CEO job. The good news, however, is that you didn't get the CEO job. Whew!

But now you can tell your children and grandchildren you came this close to running our company ( picture of two fingers a little apart..)

To say you are over-qualified might seem like a cheap kiss-off. (And it might tick off the new CEO, and who needs that?)So let's just say that your talents and potential convinced us that a much higher calling awaits you.

Yo! Go, and follow your destiny! You're just too valuable to the world to be peddling ice cream.

Be happy, go lucky,

Ben & Jerry "

Along with the letter came a certificate for a free pint...this letter is one of my favorite possessions!!!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

And you don't eat a whole pint at a sitting.

I do :unsure: Cherry Garcia is my favorite, but I've tried many of the other flavors and liked them as well. Bad thing about Ben and Jerry's is that it contains twice as much fat as other brands, such as Blue Bell.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough. Vanilla Ice Cream with Gobs of Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough

My older sister has lived out of the country since about 1982, most of that time in "third world nations." On a visit in the late 80s, she found a pint of chocolate chip cookie dough in our freezer. I still remember the look of joy on her face. "Ice cream," she said, "and cookie dough. Oh my God, these are my two favorite things in the world."

I assume that BJ weren't the first to put cookie dough in ice cream (although I think their site said they spent years figuring out how). But it was the first I'd had. It was revolutionary. I'd had mint cookie ice cream before. I'd had cherry ice cream (strawberry actually, but it's not such a leap, is it?). I'd had banana ice cream. But cookie dough? In ice cream? In one fell swoop they not only created a taste catharsis and a visceral explosion, but they legitimatized all those people who, shame on them, ate most of the cookie dough before baking the cookies. Who unpeeled that plastic salami roll of cookie dough, cut it into little quarters, put it on the tray and, realizing that the CBS late night movie was starting in 5 minutes, said, "what the hell," while carrying the tray downstairs to the couch.

The cookie dough was perfect. Large chunks of hard, but not frozen dough. Sweet with butter and sugar and sharing space with bits of chocolate. Suspended in luscious vanilla ice cream. You could feel the glorious crystals of sugar bursting as your teeth bit down on the dough. You ate the ice cream around the chunks so that your last taste was pure, unadulatered dough. You decided that tonight you wouldn't finish the entire pint, but then dug down with your spoon to turn over the ice cream and expose any large pieces of dough studding the side for dessert before you put it in the freezer, only to toss it later after you remembered that you selfishly ate all the cookie dough the night before.

Heaven in a cup.

Edited by Stone (log)
Link to comment
Share on other sites

My favorite was Wavy Gravy, which to my knowledge, is no longer made.

Cherry Garcia, however, doesnt suck too bad.

Jason Perlow, Co-Founder eGullet Society for Culinary Arts & Letters

Foodies who Review South Florida (Facebook) | offthebroiler.com - Food Blog (archived) | View my food photos on Instagram

Twittter: @jperlow | Mastodon @jperlow@journa.host

Link to comment
Share on other sites

And you don't eat a whole pint at a sitting.

I do :unsure: Cherry Garcia is my favorite, but I've tried many of the other flavors and liked them as well.

Oh yes. I meant that people will pay extra to go to the shop and get just a scoop because that prevents them from inevitably eating a full pint. It can't be helped.

And I am amazed at how much the new one really does taste like brownie batter. The gritty aspects and everything.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I can always depend on a pint of Ben & Jerry's to satisfy my craving for dioxin.
The study authors report that, according to Ben & Jerry's and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency standards, the level of dioxin measured could cause about 200 "extra" cancers among lifetime consumers of Ben & Jerry's ice cream.

What does 200 extra cancers mean? That if I keep eating B&J, I'm going to get cancer 200 times more than I otherwise would? That my body would develop 200 more "cancer cells" than it otherwise would (and, of course, kill them like it kills the rest of the cancer cells that our bodies creat), or that out of the millions of b&J eaters, 200 would develop cancer that otherwise would not? I'll take those odds.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Had a Ben & Jerry's smorgasbord last night at an anniversary party. Half Baked/Too Twisted was awesome.

They stopped making my favorite years ago - White Russian :sad:. Anybody seen that anywhere lately???????????????

I love cooking with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I can always depend on a pint of Ben & Jerry's to satisfy my craving for dioxin.

Ummmm, but who did the *single* & *limited* "study" on Ben & Jerry's ice cream?

Answer: Follow the money. Steve Milloy, of the above linked junkscience.com, who's been a paid D.C. lobbyist for the paper industry, and Michael Gough, who works at the paper industry-funded Cato Institute. And the FTC complaint was filed by junkscience.com & the Competitive Enterprise Institute. :hmmm:

This old "news" was a classic bait & switch. And a classic "don't confuse me with the facts."

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Chubby Hubby is also a damn good flavor, if not the one that takes the cake for the most calories.

Jason Perlow, Co-Founder eGullet Society for Culinary Arts & Letters

Foodies who Review South Florida (Facebook) | offthebroiler.com - Food Blog (archived) | View my food photos on Instagram

Twittter: @jperlow | Mastodon @jperlow@journa.host

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Another vote here for Coconut Almond Fudge Chip. It is available at most of the B&J stores, but I haven't seen it in a grocery store for about 4 years when they resurrected it for a summer. Baskin Robbins used to do a Coconut Almond Fudge Ripple.

Both flavors are akin to eating an Almond Joy in a cone.

Edited by cmvnapa (log)
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Since someone has introduced politics into this topic -- has anyone heard of this:

Star Spangled Ice Cream

This was a company started by a group that was so incensed that a lot of Ben & Jerry's profits goes towards charitable contributions to liberal causes, that they started their own company expressly to donate the proceeds to CONSERVATIVE causes.

Not sure how their flavors are, but something about the whole enterprise strikes me as, "well, you're letting something REALLY minor bother you more than necessary."

Edited by Callipygos (log)
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Cherry Garcia. When I was pregnant with Heidi I was sick, the whole time, and many times a day. There was just a few foods I could eat without a visit to the Porcelin Goddess. One of those was Cherry Garcia.

Half way through the pregnancy, I had lost 6 pounds. My dr. put me on a Ben & Jerry's diet!

Susan Fahning aka "snowangel"
Link to comment
Share on other sites

i loved the now departed oooey gooey cake frozen yogurt. it didn't last very long.

my favorite name of all time is makin' (macon) whoopee pie, a flavor i saw a couple years ago when i was down south, but that i've never had.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

i loved the now departed oooey gooey cake frozen yogurt. it didn't last very long.

my favorite name of all time is makin' (macon) whoopee pie, a flavor i saw a couple years ago when i was down south, but that i've never had.

Welcome, leo.

I looked at the Ben & Jerry's web site for the whoopie pie and didn't see it there at all. I wonder if it was a regional test and the flavor never caught on.

The web site does have a Resurrect My Favorite Flavor form. :raz:

"There is no sincerer love than the love of food."  -George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman, Act 1

 

"Imagine all the food you have eaten in your life and consider that you are simply some of that food, rearranged."  -Max Tegmark, physicist

 

Gene Weingarten, writing in the Washington Post about online news stories and the accompanying readers' comments: "I basically like 'comments,' though they can seem a little jarring: spit-flecked rants that are appended to a product that at least tries for a measure of objectivity and dignity. It's as though when you order a sirloin steak, it comes with a side of maggots."

 

"...in the mid-’90s when the internet was coming...there was a tendency to assume that when all the world’s knowledge comes online, everyone will flock to it. It turns out that if you give everyone access to the Library of Congress, what they do is watch videos on TikTok."  -Neil Stephenson, author, in The Atlantic

 

"In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual." -Galileo Galilei, physicist and astronomer

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think I still see the whoopie flavor in stores. If I'm not mistaken it has chocolate ice cream, chocolate soft cookies, and marshmallow swirls.

-edit- I was right. Here it is on the website http://www.benjerry.com/our_products/flavo...m?product_id=48

My bad. Thanks for the catch.

Wonder how I missed it. Too much coffee coffee buzz buzz buzz, yeah, that's it.

"There is no sincerer love than the love of food."  -George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman, Act 1

 

"Imagine all the food you have eaten in your life and consider that you are simply some of that food, rearranged."  -Max Tegmark, physicist

 

Gene Weingarten, writing in the Washington Post about online news stories and the accompanying readers' comments: "I basically like 'comments,' though they can seem a little jarring: spit-flecked rants that are appended to a product that at least tries for a measure of objectivity and dignity. It's as though when you order a sirloin steak, it comes with a side of maggots."

 

"...in the mid-’90s when the internet was coming...there was a tendency to assume that when all the world’s knowledge comes online, everyone will flock to it. It turns out that if you give everyone access to the Library of Congress, what they do is watch videos on TikTok."  -Neil Stephenson, author, in The Atlantic

 

"In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual." -Galileo Galilei, physicist and astronomer

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Why did they discontinue Wavy Gravy? Wasn't that wildly popular?

My very first experience with B&J: my first semester of college, 9/84, way upstate NY in the Adirondacks. My roommate and i hit a small general store several miles off campus. We buy a pint of a strange ice cream in a maroon container called White Russian. I loved white russians so i'm captivated by the ice cream. we get back to our dorm, i taste one spoonful....I say 'uh oh' and i hand the pint to my roommate. She tastes one spoonful, says 'oh my god' and hands the pint to our male friend.. He eats the entire pint within five minutes.

and sugar plum! i loved that, but i think i was the only one....

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...

I went to the store today and they got a new flavor called Chocolate Chocolate Cookie and it has chocolate ice cream with chocolate creme filled oreos and ribbons of fudge throughout. It rules, but it says limited batch on the container so they probably won't sell it very long!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

×
×
  • Create New...