Blue Bunny

Blue Bunny has always been one of my favorite kinds of ice cream.  As a teenager, I knew it only from the small dixie cups available at Pizza Corner in Valley City.  Later, when I moved to Iowa, where the Blue Bunny plant is located, I became entranced by all their unique flavors, and it was the only brand of ice cream I ever considered buying while I lived there.  Now that I'm here in the Mid-Ohio Valley, it's once again become a rarity for me, as the only place it can be found here is at Wal-Mart.  However, I'm starting to wonder if that's really such a bad thing.

I've had a couple of bad experiences with Blue Bunny lately.  The first was coming across a flavor that I absolutely hated: homemade turtle sundae.  I picked up a carton of this when we were recently at Wal-Mart, and it sounded like something the whole family would like.  But I was very disappointed, as the ice cream had a very artificial taste to it and the little turtle candies were extremely waxy and unpleasant.  I can be kind of an ice cream snob, but when my husband and 6-year-old stepson also refused to eat it, I knew we'd hit upon a clunker.  And looking at the long list of ingredients, it's not surprising it's either artificial or waxy, is it?

I still thought this just might be a bad flavor until I attended my nephew's birthday party this weekend.  They served bulk Blue Bunny ice cream in the pail, both chocolate and vanilla.  It didn't taste too bad, actually, but one of the little kids decided not to eat his ice cream and it just sat on the table for hours.  Although I could tell it had melted, the little scoop held its shape and didn't spread out.  That is not the sign of a natural kind of ice cream!  I know it's got to be full of all kinds of stabilizers to do that, and it kind of turned my stomach to think it might be doing similar things inside of me.

I'm not saying I'll never buy Blue Bunny again, but I do think I won't go out of my way to buy it from now on.  It just isn't that special anymore.