Call me a concerned citizen: this issue has been on my mind ever since its mention on the Colbert Report. It touches on two subjects close to my heart: ice cream and Round Rock.
Stephen Colbert boasts of his own Ben & Jerry’s ice cream variety: AmeriCone Dream–vanilla with fudge-covered waffle cone pieces and caramel. Jimmy Fallon has his own blend: Late Night Snack– fair trade vanilla, fudge-covered potato chip clusters, salty caramel swirl. Shouldn’t someone market an ice cream flavor for Round Rock?
Ben & Jerry’s, noted for delicious and witty combinations (e.g., Economic Crunch), many of which honor other influential personalities, deserves credit for a winning concept. But shouldn’t this distinction also be conferred upon a historic place, a vibrant community affording shelter and employment to thousands?
Not that Texas doesn’t offer many other attractive locales: anyone contemplating relocation can easily utilize websites like Homefair to call up side-by-side data views for various towns. You can select similar cities or even compare one zip code in the same city to another zip code area. The list of factors you can survey includes educational attainment among citizens, school test scores, property values, commute times, pollution, and many other points.
I couldn’t help noticing, however, that the “discernment and creativity quotient” is not represented. Round Rock should score well there. Don’t outsiders need to know that, in addition to the inducements of Dell, Ikea, a picturesque downtown, inviting parks and trails, a baseball team, and a huge stone resembling a flattened toadstool, our citizenry exhibits good taste to the point of actually packaging it?
And what better way to exemplify our zest for fun and dairy products? With all due respect to Ben & Jerry’s, though, we’d want someone closer to home vending our signature flavor nationwide.
Blue Bell’s Homemade Vanilla, admittedly perfect as is, would serve as the sweet foil for a quirky slate of ingredients, say cinnamon pecans and bits of Round Rock doughnuts ribboned with red pepper jelly. We could call it Round Rock Revel. (I suppose that another thriving suburb to the north would just go with Plano Vanilla.)
While this concept is still theoretical, there’s plenty of time for others to lobby their favorite ice cream producers with your own distinctive combinations. Just think of it: Round Rocky Road, Espresso Swirl Express, Brushy Creek Brickle….
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