Oatmeal Cookie Chunk

Why don't any of the stores carry Ben and Jerry's Oatmeal Cookie Chunk Ice Cream? Most of the convenience stores, drug stores, and all of the grocery stores carry Ben and Jerry's flavors, but for some reason, they select and choose what flavors to carry.

I had the opportunity to tour the B&J facility last summer, so of course, I'm an expert now. It turns out that stores can order as few as six pints of a particular flavor. It seems to me that there's no risk in ordering six pints. If you stuck a Ben and Jerry's label on a pint of ice cream called "Cat Litter Swirl," you would still find six people to give it a try.

But Oatmeal Cookie Chunk is no Cat Litter Swirl. It really does taste like a good oatmeal cookie, with the obligatory milk flavor already there from the sweet ice cream. It has a good cinnamon flavor, as I recall. Instead of raisons, it has chunks of chocolate.

Have you ever noticed how misplaced raisons can ruin a perfectly delicious dish? It isn't the taste -- it's the dead, fleshy texture that always take me by surprise, no matter how much your left brain tells you it's there. Oatmeal cookies and bread pudding top my list of places where raisons don't belong. Save them for trail mix.

Besides all of the interesting things about how the ice cream is made, how the company was started, etc., the best thing to know about Ben and Jerry's is that the drivers of the delivery trucks will give you a free pint if you tell them it's your birthday. The tour guides seemed to think it is okay to lie, and tell them it's your birthday just to score a free pint of ice cream. (This strategy also worked for Barf with a Red Bull truck, but she had to lower herself and beg more than I would have expected.)

So please, merchants of Baton Rouge, order six pints of Oatmeal Cookie Chunk. If you happen to read this, call me at home: 336-4723. I'll be happy to come take all six pints off of your hands.