banana pudding

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I’m a Puddin’ person

I don’t know what it is about pudding— maybe it’s the smooth creaminess, the variety of flavors, the way it takes me back to childhood and packed lunches—I don’t know, I just love it. Always have and always will. At the ripe old age of 27, I still buy Snack Packs and Jell-O pudding cups. (There’s Jello-O creme brulee rice pudding in my fridge, as we speak.)

Chocolate pudding, whipped cream, and butterscotch pudding. A classic is a classic for a reason.

A few months ago when I heard about Puddin’, an East Village shop specializing in— yup, you guessed it—  pudding, my inner child and inner fat kid high-fived each other, and then we all made plans to go.

The way it works at Puddin’ is you can get  simple cups of pudding in all the classic flavors, including chocolate, vanilla and  butterscotch among others, or you can add toppings into the mix (sweet add-ins like salted caramel sauce, candied nuts, or red velvet cake to name a few), OR if you’re like me and you get semi-overwhelmed in the face of so many tasty choices, you can opt for one of Clio’s signature parfaits. (Clio, in case you were wondering,  is the brains behind this whole Puddin’ operation. I kind of want to be her friend.)

The Banana Cream Dream: the stuff dreams are made of. (Or is that just mine?)

My boyfriend, like a lot of adults, I suspect, only feels lukewarm about pudding. Sure, he’ll eat it if it’s there, but he won’t go out of his way for it. So I dragged him anyway.  Playing it safe, he ordered the classic parfait with layers of thick, cool chocolate and creamy butterscotch pudding alternating between fluffy layers of whipped cream. I, with my ever raging sweet tooth, ordered the banana cream dream, which with its layers of real banana pudding, soft chunks of banana bread, crunchy graham cracker crust crumbles, and airy whipped cream, was absolutely every bit as dreamily delicious as its name implies.

So I guess, really, I do know why I love pudding so much.  Cause plain and simple, it’s awesome. And if you need a reminder of that, a visit to Clio’s Puddin’ is the perfect place to start.

Puddin' by Clio on Urbanspoon

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So over it

Today at one point while I was out and about trying not to die of a damn heat stroke on my day off, I checked my phone to see what the temperature was, and you know what that lying rat bastard phone of mine tried to tell me? 94 degrees. Ninety-friggin’-four degrees!

I’m no meteorologist but really, phone, you and I both know the temperature was a bit closer to 250 degrees. Oh and “sunny” was just a tad of an understatement. Heat-lamp-style, blistering sun would’ve been more appropriate.

So what’s a girl to do on a day like this? Drink lots of water? Well, yes, but I can’t live off water alone. No, no, times like these call for ice cream. Cold, delicious, ice cream. Which is exactly what my friend and I found while roaming around Nolita in search of relief from this disgusting weather.

When the going gets hot, the hot get ice cream.

Little Cupcake Bakeshop, as the name might suggest, had tons of cupcakes and they all looked fantastic, with fat swirls of icing and different toppings sprinkled on top, but the little cart outside with the sign that read “ice cream” was everything I needed. And there were fun flavors too, like Red Velvet, Fruity Pebbles and Brooklyn Blackout (something with about four different kinds of chocolate going on). I opted for Banana Pudding ice cream which was rich and thick, packing a ton of creamy banana flavor and crumbly chunks of what I’m assuming were Nilla wafers into a couple of scoops.

Was I still hot as the devil after eating it? Did I continue to sweat like I was being slow-roasted over a pit of hot coals? Uhm, yea, definitely, but in those brief moments when I was eating that cold, creamy ice cream, I almost forgot that New York had turned into a sauna. And when the weather is as nasty as it was today, I take whatever moments of relief I can get.