Izozkiak

With a little warmer weather, one is compelled to ignore loftier questions of politics and economics and wonder, just what is the ice cream situation over there? Well, it's different. It is nearly impossible to find the really elaborately flavored yet oddly substance-free frozen yogurt so common in California, like better living through red velvet cake chemistry. Frozen yogurt is actually frozen YOGURT, tartness and butterfat included. However, it is possible to find manufactured ice cream snacks at almost every bar for less than 2 euros, and with nearly 3 bars to every block, well, it can get dangerous. You have your typical Nestle packaged cones and chocolate-enrobed vanilla popsicles, but you also have the evidently Iberia-specific Frigo products, notably the Frigo Pie (foot). Always found in an uncanny ceclor strawberry flavor, this refreshing popsicle is enough to cool you down but not meal-replacingly large. There is a lot of devotion to the Pie, with t-shirts (also featuring the Frigo Dracula, a black popsicle with a cherry interior) and pendants and even a poster that asks the obvious question about the motivations of its inventor. Another uniquely local ice cream flavor (or anti-flavor) is Nata, or cream. Instead of vanilla being the default, nata is the go-to plain, and often comes in liter blocs alongside vanilla and chocolate. As a sucker for seasick green mint chocolate chip and NNY-specific Stewart's cotton candy, which looks like Joseph and his Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat were involved in a nuclear accident and then frozen into a dessert, I am surprised to find myself totally crazy for nata ice cream. A cone of this stuff is like a special present that was delivered on the back of a golden calf at the end of a double-rainbow. I have to keep it out of the house or I go all bird-in-a-bottle about it. Just thinking about it makes me long for summer.