Confession: I don’t spend a lot of time in the ice cream aisle of the grocery store. Actually, I don’t even set foot in the ice cream aisle, usually. A) I don’t eat cold things in winter. Duh–that would make me cold. B) In the summer, when I DO eat ice cream, I make my own.
So I am perhaps a bit behind the times with this brilliant discovery, but I’m going to share it with you anyway, just in case you haven’t checked out the ice cream aisle lately, either.
Single-serving containers of ice cream (and–even better–sorbet). Someone ought to get a medal for thinking of this. You can now go into the grocery store (or even Target, which is where I found them) tiny little cartons of ice cream, holding just one portion. You can buy just one, and when it’s gone, that’s it–it’s gone! You can’t sit there with the pint (or worse, the tub) in your lap, mindlessly shoveling in Rocky Road while you’re watching The Daily Show. You can’t keep opening up the freezer and having just one more spoonful, 15 times.
The sorbet above is a 3.5 ounce serving, containing 110 calories. That’s pretty much a perfect dessert portion. Full-blown ice cream will, of course, run you a fair amount of fat, and more calories, but even so–a 3.5 ounce carton can only hold so much. And as far as I can tell, it’s the high-end brands started the trend, so there’s more to choose from than just plain old chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry.
(For the picture above, I put the sorbet on top of an individual-sized applesauce, just for comparison purposes. You could, of course, just eat the applesauce for dessert. That would be the most sensible choice. But how much fun would that be?)