filling my cone

I do not like ice cream.

Choruses of scoffs usually greet that claim. Not liking ice cream is like not liking kittens (which is also true).

Of course, as we long ago learned from Steve's food rule ("I do not eat anything that begins with the letter "c."), most of my food claims are festooned with exceptions.

My dislike of ice cream has only one. I will eat Baskin and Robbins' cherries jubilee (née burgundy cherry). Actually, I have been eating it for about five decades. Whenever I would return from overseas assignments, our local B&R was my first stop.

When I lived in Salem, I was a regular at the shop on Market Street. One day, I decided, rather than spending the time coming and going with my two-scoop cone, I would buy the full three-gallon tub and enjoy the confection whenever I liked in the privacy of my home. (Thus are alcoholics born.)

Two incidents led me to believe I needed to cut back on my habit. One day, when I stopped by to pick up my tub of ice cream, the young man put it on the counter, looked at my ballooning body, and asked dryly: "Would you like a spoon with that?"

A month or so later, my brother, who bears a strong resemblance to me, stopped at the Market Street store. As he walked through the door, the counter girl said: "Two scoops cherries jubilee in a flat-bottomed cone?" He responded: "I know who you think I am. I'm not. But, you have the order correct."

Moving to Mexico helped me curb my limited ice cream habit. The ice cream here is far too sweet for my taste -- and it is not very creamy. All of that would not matter much. The killer was the dearth of black cherry ice cream.

Or so I thought. I avoided ice cream in Mexico for about five years. Then I discovered Thrifty ice cream stores.

I believe two friends from San Miguel de Allende (Rod and Fred) told me about the wonders of Thrifty. While looking at the multiple flavors, I hit pay dirt. Cereza negra. Black cherry. It had been there all the time.

The ice cream is an American recipe. Creamy. Not as sweet as Mexican ice cream.

I had cut ice cream out of my diet when I started my walking regimen. My recent trips to Oregon have excluded frequent stops at B&R. And, even though I walk by the Thrifty store in Barra de Navidad every night, I have avoided stopping.

Until last night. The night was too hot and the ice cream was too tempting.

But, as you can see, I went too far. One scoop would have been an indulgence. Two was gluttony.

And I paid the price. Not just the 59 pesos to buy it, but also dashed expectations. Because I have been avoiding sugar in fruits, the ice cream tasted like pure sucrose to me. I ate it, but it was not the pleasurable vice I had anticipated.

The moral to this tale? Well, sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar. If there is a moral, it is buried somewhere in that back cherry ice cream cone -- along with my best intentions.