One of my favorite treats :)

This is not so much a recipe as an idea; a discovery ~ so it doesn't really fit a Friday post.
It's so delicious, though, and makes me so happy, that I want to share it!

One of the toughest adjustments for me, with our dietary changes, was the loss of ice cream. It is just so creamy and soothing; perfect on a hot day. We went through the changing cast of players on the alternative ice cream stage: rice, soy, etc. Some were pretty good, and some were not so good.

When people would ask me, "Is it good?" I would generally answer, "It is, if you haven't had real ice cream for a number of years. It's cold and sort of creamy." Good enough was the best I thought to hope for.

Then I discovered Coconut Bliss. This stuff is so aptly named! It is creamy and smooth and wonderful. When I eat it, I no longer miss "real" ice cream. I don't know how widely available it is. It's made here in Oregon, and I've seen it in neighboring states, but beyond that I don't know. Can you find it outside the Pacific Northwest?

It is much more costly than regular ice cream, but so are all the alternatives. As we made the shift to healthier, more costly food choices, we cut down on how much of them we eat. More expensive, but smaller portions. :)

One of the other really tough transitions for me has been giving up chocolate. I continued eating it for years after it first started to bother me, because I just loved it so much. Finally, the consequences got severe enough that I started to take it seriously. This meant no more chocolate ice cream, and no more chocolate sauce on vanilla ice cream. So hard! No other toppings could take chocolate's place. I like caramel, for example, but it is just sweet on top of sweet. It lacks that bitter undertone that balances the sweetness of ice cream so perfectly.

One day, I tried Coconut Bliss Cappuccino ice cream. Oh wow. Heaven in a spoon!!! It is just simple, cappuccino flavored coconut ice cream, but it is creamy and wonderful and it has that subtle bitterness that I missed so much. Once I tried that flavor, I no longer missed chocolate ice cream!

Even though I have found a brand of ice cream that I truly love, I am still very limited in my flavor choices. Most flavors involve chocolate. I love them (especially chocolate mint!) but they do me harm. There are a few flavors that don't involve chocolate, but I don't enjoy them very much. I mostly have vanilla, or occasionally cappuccino (because, really, I'm not supposed to have caffeine).

One of the things I have missed the most is peaches-and-cream ice cream. That was my most favorite flavor when I was growing up. Last year, thinking about my old favorite, I got enthused about making my own ice cream. I bought a couple of recipe books for making vegan, coconut-based ice cream. My mom passed on my grandma's old ice cream maker, so I didn't have to shell out big bucks for my experiment.
........
But I still haven't tried it. I just keep wondering whether I should invest the time in learning what Coconut Bliss already does so well.

Then, I made my discovery, which is the actual point of this whole post.

If I let my vanilla coconut-based ice cream soften, then I can stir in other things to give it flavor. Not that this is a new idea. I did this years ago, when the kids were growing up. I used to make mint-chip, and other flavors. The idea that was new, this time, was...using sorbet for the flavor.

This has opened up a whole new world of flavor options for me. In general, sorbet is a little "sharp" for me, almost sour...but if you mix some of it into creamy vanilla? Match made in heaven. I found some mandarin orange sorbet and mixed it into my ice cream. Orange Creamsicle! Another childhood favorite. :)  I have tried, lemon, mango, raspberry, and even passionfruit- all delicious! The photo up above is of raspberry sorbet stirred into my vanilla ice cream. In my cute kitty-cat bowl. :)

Remember my longing for peach ice cream? Well! In December, our daughter Anna and I set out to make peach butter, with a box of peaches I'd bought at a farm. They tasted like actual, ripe peaches! So good. I messed up on the amount of liquid, and it just would not cook down to "butter." No problem- we canned it anyway. Now, I take some of that golden, cinnamon-peach sauce and stir it into vanilla ice cream.....it is delectable! So, so good! I have also stirred peach sauce into plain or vanilla coconut yogurt- also very good. :)

Since I now have such a simple way to enjoy different flavors, I may not dive into the world of making my own ice cream after all. This is just so good and so easy that I may just stick with spiffing up my vanilla Coconut Bliss.