If there’s one thing we like to do around here, it’s eat on the job.
We understand that we’re among the lucky few out there who actually get to go out and treat ourselves to lunch, dinner and dessert on the company’s dime – which is why we like to use that privilege to the fullest. They tell us if we don’t use it, we lose it, and none of us want that to happen.
On that note, it’s time to dig right into this week’s Go Try It, which is to eat a big maple ice cream sundae on the job, just like we did Sunday night (that’s right, this Insider has to pull night duty for the Monitor).
I’ve been holding down the night desk for the Monitor on Sundays for years now, and it’s a shift nobody really wants – except me. Sure, it’s a real drag having to put in time “workin’ for the man” until midnight or later on a Sunday night, when most of the world is sound asleep, but it’s a rare opportunity to work under the cover of darkness – and totally go to town on a messy, sticky, deliciously awesome ice cream sundae without a care in the world of who sees.
You can do this, too, even if you work more traditional hours.
I went to Arnie’s Place, a familiar location where I knew I’d be able to find maple ice cream. As I walked up to the door, there was a sign on the window indicating that maple and maple vanilla swirl were among the soft-serve options for the time being, so I knew it was meant to be.
Arnie’s doesn’t necessarily have a maple sundae on the menu, but with soft-serve maple ice cream and maple walnut hard ice cream, it’s easy to make your own.
I ordered some of the soft variety – I couldn’t remember ever trying soft-serve maple ice cream before. For the sundae fixings, I went with butterscotch. Butterscotch is really just caramelized sugar, so I felt it would blend naturally with the maple (maple syrup is just sap with the water evaporated out of it, or in other words, natural maple sugar in liquid form).
As luck would have it, I was dead right.
The combination of the smooth maple ice cream, the thick, gooey, sticky butterscotch syrup and the crunchy walnuts was pure decadence. The thing that stood out the most was the stickiness of the butterscotch. It was as though someone melted a pack of Milk Duds. Eating it made me feel like I was trapped in a huge vat of maple syrup that I blissfully ate my way out of.
As cold as it was, I pounded spoon after loaded spoon into my mouth, only taking a break to avoid brain freeze and take the occasional breath. I was so enjoying myself that I hardly cared that I was sitting at work on a Sunday night.
If you have a tough shift at work – or even if you don’t – there’s never a logical excuse not to treat yourself to a nice maple sundae while you’re at it. Who needs to whistle while you work when you can eat ice cream instead?
