Weird Culinary Experiences

[ElQueso]

I just had one of the strangest experiences I can remember and figured I'd share it. Maybe someone else has had weird stuff happen to them. Sorry if there was already a thread for this...

My sister-in-law just had a wisdom tooth pulled. She's in pain, jaw swollen, the usual. She was dying for some ice cream and I felt pity on her, so we called Volta (very expensive, but it sure is good - at least certain flavors). Delivery guy comes, she goes down to get it with one of her friends. They come back, her friend goes into the dining room and she and I are standing in the kitchen, opening the containers (we had to buy two kilos - there's a lot of us and I don't like sambayon and dulce de leche!). She hands me a spoon and we stand for a moment talking as we try out a few bites.

I dipped my spoon into the lemon I ordered and put it into my mouth, expecting the sweet-sour taste of the lemon ice to hit my tongue. As I breathed out through my nose slowly to enhance the flavor, we both noticed a white vapor pouring out, as if my exhalation was frozen more completely than a cold day in a snowstorm. At the same moment, I felt a boiling in my mouth! It took me about a second to realize what it was - a piece of DRY ICE!

I spit it out into the sink, where we proceeded to watch it boil off. It was a pellet, a half-sphere, maybe quarter of a centimeter in diameter. And it burned the right side and top of my tongue, as if I had eaten some too-hot soup. Scared the crap out of me for a moment.

Her friend was in the dining room listening to our exclamations. He missed out on the fun. Heh.

I thought about calling Volta - but the evidence had disappeared...

 

[Toastedwaves]

"weird" is an understatement. We use oil in special effects to create smoke, as dry ice is the best way but it is too expensive. Lucky you didn't spit out parts of your tongue.

so we called Volta (very expensive, but it sure is good ...

yes I would imagine.

 

[ElQueso]

Maybe it wasn't dry ice - to tell the truth I don't know much about the economics of making it or using it. I made the assumption because of the way it behaved, and I didn't taste or smell anything, though I would have expected it to burn me more than it did. It was embedded in the ice cream in my mouth so maybe with the boiling it didn't touch my tongue directly as it outgassed. I spat pretty quickly! Very, very strange sensation.

 

[scotttswan]

The good local ice cream parlour near me puts dry ice between the plastic sheets and the lid of the ice cream.
Its fun to put in drinks!

They shouldn't really be putting it in with the actual ice cream though.

 

[ajoknoblauch]

For a chain, Volta's ice cream is OK, but it's far from the best in town.

 

[PhilipDT]

Volta always puts dry ice between the top plastic/waxed paper and the styrofoam lid. Or at least they've done it for as long as I've ordered from them. It actually works to keep the ice cream cool for delivwry

 

[Davidglen77]

IMHO the best flavor from Un altra Volta is "Frutilla Granizada". Strawberry ice cream (al agua) with chocolate chips mixed in....delicious, however at $157 a kilo, I just can't justify buying ice cream at Volta anymore and haven't in more than a year.

 

[Toastedwaves]

i felt somewhat relived when I got down to the third paragraph and read that dry ice was the 'weird' part of the story. I was suspecting something to crawl out of that container. x\ eww.

 

[ARbound]

Had the dry ice thing a few times from different parlors. I like to put it in a cup of water or the sink if it's still damp.

 

[ElQueso]

IMHO the best flavor from Un altra Volta is "Frutilla Granizada". Strawberry ice cream (al agua) with chocolate chips mixed in....delicious, however at $157 a kilo, I just can't justify buying ice cream at Volta anymore and haven't in more than a year.

There's a buy-one-get-half-off-second discount that comes from the Disco receipts that helps mitigate the price a bit. And the only reason I sprung for Volta was because it was the middle of the night, they were still delivering, and our local place (which has just as good ice cream for a bit less than a third of the price!) was closed.

I love frutilla al agua (not a la crema) - sounds interesting with the chocolate granizada, I'll have to try that sometime, when I decide to buy Volta again.

Some places are just getting more ridiculous than the actual inflation rate here - which is hurting the perception of real inflation and maybe even causing more.