In Search Of A Sundae

(Ok, I want to start off by saying that I am very, truly, sorry that this may sound a little complain-y)

I am an ice cream snob. I have been searching for the perfect ice cream sundae in Columbia, Missouri for three years.  Ice cream is very important to me as you shall learn as you continue to read... We have lots of fabulous ice cream places, but none that fit the demands I shall make now:

1. My perfect ice cream place will be a sit-down restaurant. They don’t have to sell ice cream and sweets exclusively. I’m not quite sure why, but I don’t want to watch you make my sundae. I want it to be a glorious mystery. I also like the relaxed feeling that I’m here to get my ice cream and stay. Not get it and bring it home, or eat it standing up outside your crowded establishment. For the sundae to really, truly be enjoyed I must be comfortable and relaxed. I think the atmosphere is very important and eating ice cream at home doesn't quite feel the same. Plus it melts on the way there and the consistency is very important to the taste of the ice cream. If I wanted cold liquid cream I’d buy cold liquid cream.

2. They will have a minimum of 25 flavors at any given time and choices of at least 15 toppings, both wet and dry. Flavors are important. I want to be wild and adventurous while not risking too much. Toppings are equally important. I want to create perfect pairings of sweet and salty, chocolate and fruit… The perfect pairing of ice cream flavors and toppings is an art and a science and should be treated as such.

3. They will not mix the ice cream and toppings together into a cold mush. If I wanted cold mush I’d let my 1 year old daughter make me an ice cream sundae. Yes, I admit, I used to love Cold Stone. I thought it was soooo great. But then, I realized all their ice cream has the weirdest consistency after they added the “Mix-ins” and it didn’t taste very good. I don’t want my ice cream played with. Or tasting like chemicals.  P.S. Hot fudge should be just that, HOT. Chocolate syrup is NOT hot fudge. Chocolate syrup is that cheap stuff you buy to make chocolate milk with. It doesn’t belong in an ice cream sundae.

4. The toppings would be layered at least twice, meaning there would be ice cream, toppings, then ice cream again, then more toppings. That’s how you do it. This is just good sense.

5. They will have WARM brownies for their ice cream sundaes and WHOLE bananas for their banana splits. Part of the reason why a warm brownie tastes so good with an ice cream sundae is the contrast of the hot and cold. A brownie must be also be warm to really soak in the flavor of the ice cream. As far as bananas go, even in their off season they do not cost more than a dollar a piece. Charge me a little more if you have to, a banana split is not a banana split unless you split a WHOLE banana in two. I didn’t order a banana half. Geez, and I was trying to be healthy!

To be perfectly honest, I have only found a very select few places in my life in various locations that meet all of these requirements, so Columbia, Missouri is not alone here. The single greatest place I have ever had an ice cream sundae would probably be Serendipity. Well actually I also really enjoyed the “Everything But The Kitchen Sink” sundae at the PCH Grill at the Paradise Pier Hotel at Disneyland. It is served in a kitchen sink…

Famous, expensive, and wonderful, I have only been to Serendipity twice, but it was worth the trek to Manhattan from Long Island and the $15 bucks. One of my life goals is to try their Golden Opulence sundae, which at $1000.00 is a Guinness world record holder for most expensive Ice cream sundae in existence. It even has its own Wikipedia page. It freaking has REAL gold in it. And caviar. I don’t much like caviar, but for  thousand bucks I’d lick that little caviar dish clean.

The “Everything But The Kitchen Sink” sundae at the PCH Grill has 10 scoops of ice cream, 2 candy bars, 2 cookies, 2 brownies, and a ton of amazing toppings served in a large bowl fashioned to look like a kitchen sink with a faucet and everything! Too bad hot fudge didn’t flow out of the faucet…That would be killer…We went there for my birthday in 2007. There were four of us, and even though we worked together, we couldn’t finish that sundae.

I do really love Sparky’s, it’s a local Columbia, MO ice cream shop and all the ice cream is homemade. They have very interesting and delicious flavors. Back in the spring when the cicada’s were plentiful, they were serving up chocolate covered cicada ice cream. But they also have some less bug filled flavors like a red wine and chocolate, honey lavender (one of my faves), and occasionally maple bacon. Though they don’t meet a few of my requirements, I would never pass up a trip to Sparky’s!

So in conclusion, I think I should open up a fancy schmancy high-end ice cream restaurant. I would hire my sister and her boyfriend, Mike, to help because they make their own ice cream that is super incredible (or so I hear). We would also serve pancakes. And Crepes. Maybe waffles.

What is your favorite ice cream flavor and who makes it? I need some new suggestions for new flavors to try! Do you know of any great places to get an incredible sundae that would meet my demands? Do tell! I’m willing to travel!

Above: Grand Opulence Sundae by Serendipity 3

Below: "Everything But The Kitchen Sink" Sundae by PCH Grill, Disneyland (you can't tell from the photo, but the bowl has a faucet to make it look like a kitchen sink! And this bowl is the size of my head. My whole head.)

IT"S BACK!

I am very happy to report that MY EYEBROW IS BACK! That sure was fast. Revitabrow really does work! Imagine that.

I haven't really had time to keep up with my goals over the last month. I cannot believe it's August already. Over the past month I spent time at the lake with some friends, helped an Aunt move from Kansas City to Columbia, have been editing a documentary, and have begun work on the Citizen Jane Film Festival. It's been an incredibly busy month.

One awesome goal related thing is that, thanks to my awesome sister, I am going to be taking a knitting class at a place called True Blue Fiber Friends here in Columbia. I wonder if I can consider that satisfying my "Learn to Knit" and my "Take a Crafting Class" goals? I guess I'll just have to see how satisfied I feel after the class.

In other goal related news, I definitely like all kinds of sushi now. Andy and I took advantage of Jina Yoo's (an incredible local sushi restaurant) annual sushi buffet. It's a little expensive and you are only allowed one hour to consume all the sushi you possibly can, but so very worth it. Andy and I decided not to read the descriptions of the sushi, but to try a little of everything. There wasn't a single roll I didn't like. I must have wolfed down at least seven rolls of sushi. When we were finished I read some of the descriptions and could not believe some of the raw creatures I consumed. It was both delicious and terrifying. And to think I'd never even tried sushi just a few months ago. Jina Yoo's sushi is incredible.

I am hoping to begin working on sewing dresses for Lilly with my mutli-talented friend Monica, in the next few weeks or so... I am also hoping to post more often than I did last month.

Peace. (I don't know why I typed that).

SUSHI TIME!

Coming Soon: Pics Of My Brand New Eyebrow

The "Ilyssa" plate

While my sister was in town we decided to go and paint ceramics. She is the one who re-introduced me to painting ceramics as an adult. I happen to think that the ceramics place we have here, Hands On Ceramics, is way better than the one she goes to on Long Island... It cost less, plus it’s bigger, friendlier and has a more relaxing feel to it.

Since my sister was in town, I decided to paint her plate this week. She painted an awesome tray to look like the Giants' football field. The sides of the tray had an incline so she painted those to be the stands. It looks super awesome. I'm not so sure my plate looks a whole lot like mys sister. But hey, I tried!

P.S. I am pretty sure I am ruining some sort of surprise by telling you about the football platter and then posting pics on here. So, um, SURPRISE MIKE!

I'd like to know, if you could do any art project, what would it be? 

Above: Ilyssa Painting

Below: The Giant's Football Stadium Plate

A St. Louis Adventure!

This past weekend was my first time exploring St. Louis. My sister came for a visit and her flight arrived in St. Louis late Friday night. We decided instead of driving all the way there and then turning around and driving all the way back and spending 4 hours in the car, that it would be fun to cash in Andy’s hotel rewards points and stay over for the weekend. We planned to fit a lot in just two days.

We left Columbia around 9:00, but first headed over to our friend Monica’s house for the 25^th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee cast Party. We could only stay about 15 minutes and then we hit the road.

This was Lilly’s first time staying in a hotel. She has trouble sleeping when she has to share the room. No let me rephrase, she refuses to fall asleep if others around her are still awake. So we decided the best thing to do would be to let her stay up an hour and half past her bed time and that we would ALL go to bed at 10PM. This way it would be dark and quiet so she could fall asleep. That was the plan.

By the time we got to the airport and got Ilyssa, it was already 11:30 and Lilly was fast asleep in her car seat. She was WIDE AWAKE when we got to the hotel at 12:00 AM. We got to our room and made it in about 3 feet before we noticed only one queen bed and a couch that didn’t open up. Andy went to complain to the front desk. When Andy told him there was only one bed, the man was like “WHAT!? Where could it have gone!?” He came to our room and proceeded to show us the door to the second bedroom. “Sir, you got the suite. It has two rooms.” Oops. That was embarrassing. After apologizing several times for making the guy come all the way to our room to help us find a giant queen sized bed we thought was missing, we set up Lilly’s pack and play and let her run around and get tired again.  

At about 1AM we were all ready for bed. We turned out the light and did our best to ignore Lilly’s whining, which thankfully lasted no more than two minutes before she fell asleep. Andy and I did a silent high five over this toddler bedtime victory, rolled over and promptly fell asleep.

Lilly didn’t wake up until 9:30 the next morning! We got our fabulous continental breakfast which included eggs, sausage, waffles, and yogurt among other things and headed out to the zoo! It was only 10:30 AM and was already HOT. The St. Louis Zoo is special to us because it is where Andy and I got married! After seeing, penguins, a cheetah, a bear, a tiger, pelicans, flamingoes, gorillas and  discovering Lilly is absolutely terrified of anything that is not human, we decided to get some lunch and head back to the hotel for naptime.

First we went to pick up the cake my sister ordered from the bakery that made our wedding cake. It was the same flavors as our wedding and cake tasted delicious!

After nap we headed to pride fest where we heard some great music, had some great drinks, and got like 12 bags of free potato chips! We let Lilly run around the park a little. She found these two guys sitting under a tree, ran over to them, and without hesitation just plopped down in the one guys lap. Luckily he found it just a funny and adorable as we did.

Next it was dinner time. We went to a place called Cheese-Ology where all they have is mac-n-cheese! They have tons of different flavors and everything we got was DELICIOUS! Lilly loved her dinner too and ate with a fork all by herself. She also colored. Directly on the table. So we had to wipe that off...  Thank God for Crayola washable crayons! Cheese-Ology was crowded, so we didn’t stay too long after we finished our meals.

The week before I searched the internet for something we could do on Saturday night that was kid friendly and would be open late so we could stick to our 10PM bed time without having a kid running around a hotel room for two hours first. I found the City Museum which was exactly what I was looking for! It is this amazing hands on museum with all kinds of things the whole family can enjoy and it is open until 1AM on Friday’s and Saturdays! There was a lot there that Lilly couldn’t do, but she had a blast playing in the toddler section, coloring on the giant blackboard wall with chalk, building with sponge blocks (and knocking said buildings over), and just seeing all the new and interesting things and watching the “big kids” play. As an adult, the City Museum was super fun! I might even like to try it without Lilly sometime.

We got back to the hotel at a good time and we all went to bed around 10:30. I had some trouble sleeping though. A storm came through and there were some really loud crashes of thunder. The loudest booming at 2:56 AM when I heard the hum of electricity die out and the hotel lost power. The storm settled down and I assumed the power would probably be back by the time we got up and I fell asleep. I woke up first, around 8:30 AM, and there was still no power. I went down to the front desk to check on the situation. They had no clue when the power would be back. There was no breakfast this morning, and the front desk attendant handed me a flashlight so I could use it to see in the bathroom. She assured me that the water was heated with gas so we could still shower.

The hot water was non existent. I braved the icy shower with a flashlight just barely providing enough light for me to determine which was the shampoo and which the conditioner. No sooner did I get dressed, but the power came back. Had I waited just 20 minutes I could have taken at least a warm shower!

We packed up the car and decided to skip the pride parade because of the heat (we didn’t want to sit in one place in the sun in that heat) and headed straight (no pun intended) to Six Flags!

Six Flags was fun. We did a couple of rides and purchased the $15 cup that gets you free refills for the day (which proved to be a very good purchase!). We decided pretty early on to walk back to the car, change into swim suits and hit up Hurricane Harbor. We spent most of the time playing in the giant kid’s area. It was so much fun! They had water pouring and spraying out of everywhere! Lilly had a blast! It felt soooo good to cool off! We spent about 3 hours there. By the time we finished it was 4PM and we headed back into six flags for a couple more rides and few last fill ups of that blasted $15 cup (we filled it up 12 times, so totally worth it). 

Lilly slept very well that night. All in in all it was great mini-vacation! Now here are some photos I took with my phone. I'll hopefully add some better ones, as both Andy and Ilyssa were snapping away with nice cameras all weekend.

Above and Below: Lilly watching the penguins from a safe distance so they wouldn't eat her alive.Or so she thought. 

Above: The Weener Mobile out and about in STL

Below: Tower Grove Park where Pridefest was held.

Above: Ilyssa and Andy at Cheese-Ology

Below: Our delicious Mac-N-Cheese meals!

 Below: Lilly enjoying the giant black board at the City Museum

"Uno-Brow"

My mom has always told me that there is never a dull moment when I’m around.

So yesterday I went to get my eyebrows waxed. I go about every other month to have that done. This time my sister is in town so she decided to come along and get hers done too…

I went first. Actually I almost didn’t go. I said “I think I’ll just cancel” and my sister offered to pay for me so I agreed to go.

I climbed up on that table first, which is kind of difficult when the table is so high up and my legs are so darn short. I lied down and relaxed. Tanya* (*names have been changed to protect those involved. Tanya is the first name I thought of just now for some reason…) asked me what I’d like to do to my eyebrows. “Just clean them up a bit. I don’t want to take too much off.”  I said. Famous last words…

She worked on my right eyebrow first. She finished that up in about 3 or 4 minutes. Tanya moved on to my left eyebrow and plucked a little. She then applied the wax, put on that little cloth strip and ripped if off. I was looking right up at her face and her eyes suddenly got really wide. She covered her mouth with her hands and let out a little gasp!

“What? What’s wrong? Did you take too much off?” I said innocently, not really worrying. I figured she had just made them a little thinner than I had wanted.

“OH MY GOD, I’m so SORRY!”

“What? What Happened?”

“I um, I took off your entire eyebrow. I’m so sorry!” Tanya turned around and moved behind the table by my head where I couldn’t see her.

“What? Really?” I looked over at my sister whose eyes were also very wide…

This is when Tanya got the mirror. She took a deep breath before she turned it around to show me what she had done and I could see her face was red and her eyes shining with tears. She turned the mirror around and OMIGOD she really did take off my whole eyebrow! I couldn’t help it, I burst out laughing. I laughed so hard and Tanya burst into tears. I had to assure her I was not laughing at her, but just the whole situation and the fact that I looked pretty darn ridiculous. I kept telling her not to worry, it’s not a big deal because I have bangs. She said that it WAS a big deal. In her 8 years as an esthetician she said this had never happened to her. Judging by her reaction I’d say she was telling the truth. My sister and I were laughing so hard. Tanya drew my eyebrow back on for me. I tried not to laugh too much while she did that, but that task proved virtually impossible. She also gave me this little bottle of stuff for free called Revitabrow. It cost over $100 and is supposed to regenerate eyebrow growth or something. Tanya asked my sister “Do you still want to get your eyebrows done?” My sister blurted out “No thank you!”. I again, through my laughter, reassured her its ok, and not to worry.

We left the building quickly and bust out the door. As soon as the door closed behind us we burst out laughing even harder than before. I laughed so hard on the way home there were tears streaming down my face and I could barely see the road in front of me. I can’t remember the last time I laughed that hard.

Ilyssa said she couldn’t believe how well I handled that. She said she would have cried, as did everyone else I’ve told this story to. Some said they wouldn’t have been as nice. Sure I only have one eyebrow now, but this was a very unlikely situation. I will not tell you the name of the place that did it. They are very good at what they do and I would never want to take away any potential business from them because of one little mistake. And yes, I will go back there. It might be a while though since I’ll have to grow my left eyebrow back first.

Almost 24 hours later and I’m still laughing.

And that is how I lost my left eyebrow (Or as Andy likes to call it, my “Uno-Brow”) and became a horribly disfigured freak.  


It is "Uno-Brow" (pronounced Uno like the game or the Italian number one), meaning "one-brow" not Uni-brow which sounds more like two eyebrows have "united" to create one big brow. "Uno-Brow". Lets get it added to the dictionary!

Below: Chalk Drawing At Tasti D Lite

I. Have. No. PATIENCE.

I am so excited for this weekend I can’t take this day any more. I. Just. Can’t. TAKE IT.

My sister is flying in and will be visiting for the week and we will be spending this first weekend in St. Louis. We have a lot planned. The zoo, eating a wedding cake, STL Pride Fest, A surprise dinner, surprise after dinner entertainment (the surprises are for Lilly and Andy), then Pride parade on Sunday, looking at the STL Arch from a park, followed by an afternoon/evening at Six Flags St. Louis! It’s going to be so much fun and we are going to be exhausted come Sunday night.

The weather is INCREDIBLE today. Let’s hope it lasts through the weekend.

This day is just dragging… and it’s only halfway over. And I’m hungry. Spend my lunch writing a blog post, or eat? Hmmm… How about both? Time for the second part. I’ll post pics of the glorious weekend after it ends. 

Below: This is my "I CAN'T WAIT FOR THIS DAY TO END" face