Homemade Vanilla

There is only one store in Denver where I can find my favorite ice cream, Blue Bell. It costs a fortune, but it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make to be able to taste my childhood. You can get butter pecan, chocolate, cherry cordial, and various others but the only thing I ever get is Homemade Vanilla. I can't figure out why it's better than all the other vanillas out there, but it is!

It tastes like summers at my grandparents. If my brother and I were well behaved and didn't wake my grandparents up from their nap we could have an afternoon treat. Either a chocolate malt or a sundae with banana and maraschino cherries. It wasn't an every day affair but just often enough to make it worth it to play quietly during nap time. Sometimes as an after dinner treat, my grandma would let us have a "big" scoop in a small wooden bowl. If my cousins were over grandma would make us coke floats. She never had root beer and I could never figure out why.

I ate Blue Bell ice cream all the time before we moved to Denver because you could buy it in the grocery store. When we moved here and it wasn't around we made due with other brands. Dolly Madison wasn't bad. When summer came, it was time for my grandparents to stock up because we wouldn't have had Blue Bell since the summer before. My Grandma said that they went through more milk, bread, cheese, and ice cream in one month with us there, than three months with just the two of them.

When I used to drive to Texas to visit family, I would always stop in Amarillo at a gas station and get one of the tiny Blue Bell vanilla cups. It was the very first thing I felt I should do once I got to my home state. Now I fly most of the time and when I get to my Dad's house he's got it waiting for me in the deep freeze.

I've found some good ice cream places here but nothing compares to Blue Bell. It's nice to have a place selling it now. It's a fun treat every now and again. I try not to go too often, so as not to spoil the memories.