How much would you be willing to (accidently) spend on ice cream?

I suppose this is a strange question to ask. We eat a lot of ice cream in our house, so that is one constant on the weekly grocery shopping list. Back home it was much easier to find lower fat varieties, or womething with less calories. I have found that the commissary has limited options for "healthier" ice cream. One of my favorites that we used to get in Vegas was the Dryer's (AKA Edy's for those of you on the east coast) Raspberry Chip Royale- Slow Churned, the kind with less fat. This was one of the best ice cream flavors, which is strange because it is not chocolate based (my favorite!).

I am also going to mention, since we are on the subject of ice cream, that the labels may confuse you when you are shopping. I always laughed when we shopped for ice cream at the local Smith's. They had sooooo many flavors to choose from in the Dryer's brand. Some flavors came in both the low fat and the low sugar varieties. You would think one was better for you than the other. However, when looking at it from the perspective of weight management, they had a 10 calorie difference per half cup serving. Not much of a difference really at all. In fact, the no sugar added only has 1 gram less fat and 1 gram less carbohydrate, which explains the ~10 calorie difference. I am personally not a big fan of sugar alcohols, so I would choose just the low fat variety over the no sugar added any day.

So, you can see we have invested much time into ice cream shopping, consumption, and let's not forget the ice cream making in our household. It will be so nice once our things arrive here so we can unpack the kitchen items, which includes our ice cream maker. So, this finally brings me to our ice cream adventure at the local grocery store. Let's get started:

Ice cream here, for the most part, is very rich. Much heavier than what we are used to. There is a store brand here that we have also tried from the local grocery chain. This is similar to orange sherbet, although it appears to be tangerine flavor. I must say this had a very strong metallic after taste and I will not be buying this again.



Next up we have these cute little mini ice cream cones. These looked so adorable that i could not resist purchasing them. A box of 12 mini cones cost about $3 dollars, and at only 50 calories each, it's the perfect treat to satisfy a sweets craving. I only saw strawberry when I was at the store, so I am hoping to find another flavor next time. Only for variety sake though. The strawberry cones are fantastic.

Ah, now this brings me to the question of the day. How much would you be willing to (accidently) spend on ice cream? At the commissary they have Ben & jerry's pints for sale, and they are quite cheap compared to stateside prices. So, when we were in the local grocery chain we spotted Ben & Jerry's and thought YUM. The flavor was one we have never seen before and seemed to be a special European version not made for the United States. Who could pass up the opportunity? Certainly not us! Who can share a pint? Certainly not us!

So we picked up to pints of Caramel Chew Chew Ben & Jerry's ice cream and headed to the check out line. You will be amazed to find out that we paid ~6.50 euro each pint (Yes, euro! That is about $9.00 a pint). So you can see given the language barrier and trying to explain to a check out girl that the store must have lost their minds was really not going to work to well. We simply looked at each other and just realized this was a valuable learning experience. This time, pay for it, take the ice cream, enjoy it, and then don't do it again. Really, lesson learned here, always check the little price tag by the food, even if you can't make much sense of it.

Looks like we are willing to accidently spend about $18 for the two of us to enjoy some ice cream. At that price we could have had multiple trips to the Marble Slab Creamery we loved so much in Vegas.

Boy was this one tasty though, but no way am I am buying this again unless it goes on sale!