The summer is like a hot iron on the Texas soul. But luckily we have cold stuff to combat the sweaty dread.
Found this at the vending machine in front of Home Depot. Of course I took it as a personal challenge to my masculinity.
It came out of the machine so cold and hard it splintered the balsa-wood spoon that came with the cup, which was not cool. And then it wasn’t all that sour.
Here’s some of the hauls from various Korean markets. When I opened up this popsicle I thought that it might be chocolate! But my heart sank when I discovered it was red-bean flavored through and through. Yech.
This melon-flavored soda had that neat opening that uses a punch tab and a marble. It tasted nice, but it had roughly three tablespoons of soda inside, which is not nearly enough for a giant man like me.
Likewise with this soda, except it had some sort of Pokemon thing, which didn’t actually do anything. Personally, I didn’t feel all that comfortable paying two bucks for a plastic trinket and a dribble of sugar water.
The yogurt-flavored soda was not as disgusting or as interesting as you might think.
Pollapo must be Korean for purple-flavored ice.
Every time I drop in to the Korean market, there’s a new set of cold treats. Korea must be a tasty wonderland. There’s a lot of Lotte snacks, like this stick of strawberry-flavored ice.
Or this waffled sandwich of chocolate and icecream.
The frozen crepe stick was filled with icecream and chocolate chips.
I think this frozen novelty is the most brilliant thing I’ve ever seen.
This thing I’m eating?
I don’t know, chocolate or something. It was already half-melted, and it didn’t take me more than fifteen seconds to devour the other half.
This convenience store Mega Missile also illustrates the difficulty of preventing premature popsicle loss.
And when we’re talking about cold things, who knows how to combat Texas heat better than Mexicans?
The guy pushing the icecream cart around the neighborhood warned me that the Lucas bar was chili. He didn’t think I could handle it.
I totally handled it.
From another gentleman with a pushcart and a big cowboy hat. A cup of cookies and cream icecream, eaten on the curb with a balsawood stick that the icecream man took out of a garbage bag hanging from the cart handles.
My associate got the watermelon popsicle because it was a long day in the sun, and he "wanted something with as much water as possible."
From the dude in the van with the familiar yet unrecognizable song blasting from the roof speaker, I acquired the most delicious vigilante in Gotham.
Justice is best served cold. And creamy. And sweet. And Batman’s eyeballs? They’re actually gumballs! They never mention that in comics.
I haven’t been spending enough time at Pepe’s Fruitcup stand. It’s because I thought it just had fruit, and I’m really more of a processed sugar and animal protein kinda guy. Well, the have that. This banana split was more like a small barge of softserve icecream, whipped cream and sprinkles. I rushed home to take it’s picture, but the two minutes in the sun did not do it good.
For a long time I had thought that raspas were just snowcones. How wrong I was. A raspa is like a snowcone the same way a Hello Kitty is like a Bengal tiger.
This was tamarind and cherry flavored, topped with sprinkles of chili and salt (they had a canister of chili-salt on the counter if you didn’t think you got enough). The salt melted into the ice slush, making it even colder. And that stuff on the straw? Chili-tamarind candy.
For almost twenty minutes I was virtually not-hot.
If ever you’re in one of the seedier convenience stores in Austin, you might see some odd little condiment packages sold up by the cash register. "Twang" is flavored beer salt. It comes in a variety of flavors, but this chili-lime flavor is probably the most gastronomically accessible.
It makes even the cheapest beer taste a little more like salt. And yes, after a few months of sweating, that’s a good thing.
