ALDI Pizza Ravioli

The frozen-food cases at ALDI hold such delights - which rotate in availability with a baffling inscrutability - that I could probably write this blog exclusively about ALDI products and never run out of source material. Why, just the other day I went in for some bread and a head of lettuce - and nothing else - but the siren song of the frozen foods beckoned me and there I beheld PIZZA RAVIOLI.

There were two varieties available: Pepperoni and Cheese. I bought a bag of each and boiled them up according to standard ravioli operating procedures, and then served them without attempting to distinguish by sight which ones were which.

The Pizza Ravioli are as deliciously satisfying as frozen ravioli can be. That is not intended to be insulting or ironic, either: The ravioli I grew up eating was always frozen - I don't think I saw a "fresh" ravioli until I was like thirty years old - but it means that you're not going to find huge bursting-at-the-seams-with-ricotta ravioli in these bags. The filling is standard quantity, and standard-for-ALDI quality (which means, of course, that it's right on par with any name brand you might usually buy.)

I cooked and served the two varieties by dumping both bags at once into the boiling water, then fishing them out and intermingling them in a big shallow serving bowl. I wanted an adventure, because it's impossible to tell by eye whether the ravioli on the end of your fork is pepperoni or cheese. It's not until the mildly spicy taste of the pepperoni hits your tongue that the difference is clear. ALDI certainly got the taste down pat here. These ravs genuinely taste like pizza, enough so that even Lynnafred's boyfriend ate them, despite his declared distate for ricotta cheese (he usually only eats meat ravs, the heathen.) They were really delicious, and a nice change from standard ravioli. I would buy them again.

Remember if you can't find these in your local ALDI, have a chat with the store manager to see when the store is going to get some in. Like many of ALDI's products, Pizza Raviolis are generally a "limited time" item, and every store's schedule differs.

REVIEW: Mendelsohn's Frozen Lasagna

Single-serve frozen lasagna is one of my favorite lunches, and I'm always looking for new brands to try. So naturally, I grabbed a couple of boxes of Mendelsohn's Lasagna when I found it at The Barn in Greenfield MA.

This is a very simple lasagna - four layers of noodles each separated by a miniscule sprinkling of mozzarella cheese and tomato sauce, topped with a generous portion of more mozzarella, and not a bit of ricotta cheese to be found anywhere.

So basically., this "lasagna" is actually just pasta and cheese with some sauce.  And bad sauce it is, with so much sugar it's like eating candied pasta. Too bad, really, because despite the other shortcomings, I would be inclined to buy Mendelsohn's Lasagna again if it weren't for that awful tomato syrup.

On the positive side, it's the only frozen lasagna I've found which is certified Kosher. I guess you should consider that a warning - if you're keeping Kosher and you're relying on Mendelsohn's Lasagna for lunchtime deliciousness you will find only disappointment.

Review: Celentano Stuffed Shells

If you've got an available microwave, there are few lunches as satisfying as frozen pasta dishes. I've found good (and bad) inexpensive Italian dishes in the freezer case at the supermarket, and there are a couple of brands that I know will almost always be good enough to buy more than once.

Celentano is one of these brands. I've mentioned their eggplant parmesan as one of my regular choices, and their lasagna is one brand in a three-way tie for best in a comparison of eleven different varieties I taste-tested a few years ago.

Stuffed shells are the perfect lunch for someone who loves ricotta cheese, and Celentano delivers in a big way. The freezer tray you buy contains six jumbo pasta shells, plump with seasoned ricotta stuffing, dressed with Celentano's delicious-though-basic tomato sauce. If you're wicked hungry, you won't have any problem eating all six shells. If your appetite is lighter and you're having lunch with a friend, you can have three each and a small salad and you're good until supper time.  And if you're a Mom-Dad-and-Junior nuclear family, you can dish out two each as a side dish with, say, oven-roasted chicken breasts and a tossed salad.

Any way you decide to go with these stuffed shells, you won't go wrong. They're great.

.

Review: Banquet Pepperoni Stuffed Breadsticks

Here we go again, with another cheap, microwave-ready frozen snack from ConAgra's Banquet brand. This time, it's Pepperoni Stuffed Breadsticks with Marinara Dipping Sauce.

Before cooking.

Right out of the package, the frozen breadsticks look almost like real pepperoni wrapped in dough. Pay close attention to the product, though, and you'll see that the "reduced fat pepperoni stick" is actually an extrusion of red paste. 

The ingredients panel on the box horrifyingly reveals that the "reduced fat pepperoni" is in fact made of dough, "meat blend" made of beef and pork, textured vegetable protein, "restricted melt cheese," "substitute mozzarella cheese," and a Monsanto inventory's worth of various chemicals.

After cooking.

It's quite a stretch for Banquet to call it a "stick" at all, since after cooking the pepperoni-dough core of the breadsticks melts and spreads and bonds with the plain bread dough exterior. The overall effect is soft, chewy and doughy, like a nicely-baked soft breadstick but without any real type of crust.

The marinara dipping sauce that comes with the breadsticks is fairly standard stuff, strongly flavored with oregano and seasoned with crushed garlic, onion, and other Italian-style herbs. While certainly not ground-breaking or very exciting, it is completely authentic-tasting.

Just like with the previously-reviewed Beef & Cheese Quesadillas from Banquet, the Pepperoni Stuffed Breadsticks are - despite their Frankensteinian origins - totally delicious.  I would absolutely buy them again.

International Foods at Stop & Shop

Behold the awesomeness of the International Foods selection at my hometown Stop & Shop supermarket:

Frozen mini-egg rolls, meatballs, mini-tacos, burritos, pizza rolls, and of course Smucker's peanut butter-and-jelly "Uncrustables." It's like being in some bizarre parallel universe where all the Chinese foods are sold in cans by LaChoy and all the Italian foods are made by Chef Boy-R-Dee.

I Had Douchebag Pizza For Lunch

More specifically, I had Red Baron Thick Pan Pepperoni Pizza for lunch.

Hey, check this out: It's EXCLUSIVELY PREPARED!
What the hell does that even mean?

I decided to try it because I am inexplicably fond of Red Baron's small deep-dish pizzas (the ones that come in twin packs.) They're not anything like a "good pizza," but there is something about the cracker-like shell crust and slightly strange-flavored sauce that appeals to me.  So how bad could a "Thick Pan" pizza be, right?

Well, I will say this about the Thick Pan pizza: in real life, it looks exactly like the photo on the package. I'm sure you've seen enough box-cover-art "Serving Suggestions" to know how rare that is. The sauce and pepperoni were also exactly what I expected: fairly decent pepperoni (spicy and just a little greasy) and sauce that had a slightly strange flavor heavy on the oregano and kind of light on the tomato flavor. 

And dat crust. The cardboard platform on which it was cooked in the microwave is coated with that gray stuff that makes things in the microwave get browned. So the crust had a nice crispy browned bottom, and it tasted just like the thin and crunchy deep-dish crusts that the small Red Baron pizzas have. But it was thick, soft, and a little spongy, more like a cheap bread than a real crust. I know I wasn't going to get a primo New Haven pie here, but even at that I found it somewhat substandard. If you like a thick, soft crust, you might want to try out the Red Baron Pizza. I probably won't buy it again.

So why, you may ask, did I call it "Douchebag Pizza?"  Check out the box art. It's covered with pictures of douchebags. "HEY GUYS! It's the Baron! Looking for douche food? Well, you're in luck!"

Mama Cozzi's Mexican Style Pizza by ALDI

Among the many different varieties of frozen pizza available at ALDI under their Mama Cozzi's brand are two Mexican-inspired versions that you might want to check out.

Tuesdays are often Taco Tuesday in my house; we make up a pan of seasoned ground beef, and then we all build our own tacos using a variety of ingredients and toppings. We have a great time, and eat great tacos. But sometimes, for a change of pace, we throw a couple of Mama Cozzi's Mexican Style frozen pizzas in the oven instead. It takes about the same amount of time to prepare, and it's almost as much fun.

The Chicken Fajita pizza (shown in the picture at left as slightly overbrowned on the edge, oops) is pretty good. Thin, crispy crust topped with taco sauce, roasted chicken strips, red, green, and yellow peppers, shredded cheeses, and red onion. Tasty. Not perfectly like a chicken fajita, mind you, but Mexican-styled enough in its own way that we enjoy it.

The Taco Seasoned Pizza is very authentic, with seasoned ground beef, shredded cheeses, green and red peppers, sliced black olives, and chopped onion on a taco-sauced thin crust. It's delicious, and it keeps the "taco" in "Taco Tuesday."

Both of these are available on a rotating  basis at your local ALDI store. Regular ALDI shoppers know that products there come and go, but usually return. If your local ALDI doesn't have them, ask the store manager when they're supposed to come back.

Priano Vegetable Lasagna by ALDI

Priano Vegetable Lasagna, an ALDI house brand, is probably one of the most unusual frozen lasagnas I've tried in some time.

First of all, there is absolutely no ricotta cheese - or even any cottage cheese - within its layers. Eash seet of pasta is separated by a lightly seasoned layer of pale red (almost orange) tomato sauce. And, although both the box art and the ingredients indicate that the pasta is going to be green spinach pasta, this is not actually the case; the only thing there is plain ol' standard sheets of lasagna noodles.

The lasagna certainly delivers the mozzarella, though. the first thing you'll notice when the package comes out of the microwave is the thick mozzarella topping studded with bits of broccoli, sauteed onion bits, and what I think are either carrots or tomatoes. Overall, I liked it even though it really wasn't what I was expecting.

On the other hand, this Priano lasagna was imported from Germany. What do the Germans know about making lasagna, anyway?

To see how this lasagna stacks up against other frozen lasagna brands and varieties, click here.

Bremer Selects Vegetable Lasagna by ALDI

Bremer Selects Vegetable Lasagna (an ALDI house  brand) is pretty good as frozen lasagnas go. The "vegetables" are provided by finely cut zucchini and carrots in with the sauce, but they're well enough incorporated into the mix that they aren't disturbing (or noticeable, for that matter) even by someone who might profess to hate zucchini and/or carrots.

The sauce is quite authentic, and there is just enough of it to make for a good consistency - not dry enough to make the lasagna tough, nor so much as to make it soupy. I suppose there could be a bit more mozzarella on top, and I also took points off for there being cottage cheese in the layers instead of real ricotta, but overall I thought it was a good lasagna and a decent lunch.

To see where this lasagna ranks among other frozen lasagnas I've reviewed, click here.

Tennessee Pride Fully Cooked Sausage Patties

I have only one rule about buying sausage at the store: Don't ever buy fully-cooked frozen sausage, because it is never any good.

And yet, when I saw these Tennessee Pride fully cooked sausage patties at ALDI the other day, I bought them against my better instinct. After all, Tennessee Pride is a solid brand - I've had other products put out by them before, and was never disappointed.

But those products were never fully cooked and frozen.

I opened the package to find the eight patties had been put into sets of two, each set enclosed in a plastic pouch. It seems that these were portioned to microwave two at a time and be served with a couple of biscuits. Sure enough, the package instructions were all about microwaving.  But I was feeding the family breakfast aqnd wasn't interested in an individual serving to heat-and-eat. I unwrapped the lot of them and put them in a frying pan over low heat to warm up, and served them alongside eggs and homefried potatoes

I really like the flavor of Tennessee Pride sausage. The spices are well balanced, and the result is really delicious. But the spongy texture, too wet and too chewy, put all of us off. It's the same reason I won't ever buy Banquet Brown 'n' Serve sausage - nothing against the flavor, everything against the mouthfeel.

I don't think I'd buy them again unless they were wicked cheap.

Review: Priano Eggplant Parmesana by ALDI

Sometimes when I'm in the mood for eggplant parmigiana, I don't have any eggplant handy. That's not a problem in the summer, when my eggplant vines in the garden are practically falling over with fruit. But in the winter and spring, good eggplant is hard to find, and local eggplant is just not available. And that's when frozen eggplant parm comes in.

Most of the time, I've bought Celentano eggplant parmigiana. It's decent, and Celentano's tomato sauce is very good. But recently, I found that ALDI was carrying their house brand parmigana, Priano. I bought a few to give it a try. 

And no surprise, it's as good as I've come to expect from ALDI products. The slices of eggplant are lightly breaded, with tangy tomato sauce and mozzarella cheese between the slices (though not as much as the box photo shows.) The product is microwaveable, but when I'm cooking it at home I put it in the oven so I can melt a little mozzarella on the top for the last five minutes of heating time. Half a package is perfectly adequate for a serving along side the pasta of your choice (my choice for the photo at left was rigatoni.) Delicious. 

Like many ALDI products, you may have trouble finding it at your local ALDI, since they have a habit of rotating the availability of many of their specialty items. If you can't find it at your ALDI, don't be afraid to ask the manager about it - they may be able to bring it in for you.

Review: Marie Callender's Fruit Pot Pies

In September 2010, I reviewed Banquet Fruit Pies. You can read the full review here, but the capsule version of it is: They suck.

Now, ConAgra has expanded their line of personal-sized fruit pies by bringing the concept over to their Marie Callender's brand.  Allow me to present Marie Callender's Apple, Cherry Berry, and Peach fruit pies:

Marie Callender's Pot Pies are measurably better than Banquet Pot Pies, even though they are produced by the same company.  So I figured that the same might apply to these fruit pies.  WRONG.

There are only two differences between Banquet fruit pies and Marie Callender's fruit pies: The Marie Callender version is slightly larger, and the crusts are dusted with cinnamon sugar.  Otherwise, they could be interchangeable.  The fillings are mostly blandly-flavored goop, and the fruit within is sparse and mushy. They're every bit as crappy as the cheaper Banquet version.

Seriously, these pies are shit. Avoid at all costs.

Lobster Slider Patties

I was poking around in the frozen food section of Dollar Tree and found these: Lobster Slider Patties. How awesome to find something as expensively gourmet as lobster at such a reasonable price! Even though the box felt kind of light, still: LOBSTAH FOR A DOLLAH! I knew it must be true, because "Lobster Meat" was the first ingredient listed on the side panel Yea, though I paid a pauper's coin for this delight, verily I would dine like King Neptune this night.

Of course, there was other fine print on the label, like on the front where it shows a photo of two plump and delicious lobster slider patties on fresh rolls with some kind of mayo peeking out from the bottom.  Superimposed over the bottom of the righthand sandwich, in a typeface so tiny it is barely readable by the naked eye, is the advisory: "Serving Suggestion." This is a marketing term which loosely translates as "What you're seeing here isn't exactly what you're getting in the box."

When the box was opened, we found two "patties," sans bun (that was part of the "Suggestion," and the box was after all clearly labeled "Slider Patties" without any mention of buns.) They were about the size and shape of a chocolate-chip cookie, and looked like they had been hand-formed.

The cooking instructions strongly suggested baking the patties in the oven, mentioning that it was superior to the micowave. Instead, I opted to pan-fry them in butter. Besides the fact that pan-frying adds a delicious crispy crust to the bottom and top, I was also not about to run the oven for two tiny little dollar-store patties. So into the pan they went, sizzle-sizzle-sizzle, and out they came to a plate a few minutes later, exactly as anticipated: crispy and browned on the top and bottom, soft and hot inside.

We broke bits off and examined them. They are definitely made primarily of lobster meat and crumbs, exactly as the ingredient label states. (The red pieces you see in the photos are bits of red bell pepper that appear to be added as a garnish.) But don't look for chunks of lobster, because you won't find it. Look carefully at the lobster patty chunk on the end of your fork, and you'll see the meat: tiny little fibers that are the last remaining bits of salvageable meat from the lobster after all of the choice bits have been taken for other purposes. Note, however, that there was no way for us to really tell what kind of "lobster" it was. It could have been Maine lobster, or langostino "lobster", or lobster tails for all we could tell.

At any rate, it didn't matter. The patties passed the most important test: they actually tasted good. They had a decent shellfishy flavor and a smooth, if a bit wet, texture that was reminiscent of the stuffed clam filling one might find in a restaurant. A few dashes of hot sauce pepped up the patties and brightened the shellfish flavors.

I don't really think I'd serve these as "sliders," on a little hamburger roll. That would be way too much like eating a bread sandwich (I'll have a whole wheat on rye, hold the pumpernickel please.) But if I had some little sausage patties on biscuits, these lobster patties would be awesome snuggled in there against the pigmeat.

So I might not have dined like King Neptune, but I liked the lobster patties well enough. A buck well spent.

Because You Don't Poop Correctly

"Digestive Health" products are everywhere.  The most famous, I guess, is Dannon's Activia brand yogurt, with ads starring Jamie Lee Curtis as The Poop Lady.  And now the Jolly Green Giant jumps in the shit with DIGESTIVE HEALTH VEGETABLES.  

"I'm so proud of that last one that
I left it in the bowl for you to admire."

Yeah, that's definitely the smile of someone who takes regularly-scheduled dumps. I bet when he pinches one off, it's the size of a redwood.

A Sack Of Frozen Pancakes???

Really, now...is it that difficult to make pancakes?

No, of course it isn't.  And homemade pancakes are a small fraction of the price of bagged, and they taste better, and they don't take all that much time to whip up.

Now, you really should have a pancake recipe somewhere in your recipe collection, but just in case you don't, here's the one Maryanne uses.  It's easy to remember, too, because the ingredients are "a symphony of ones."

Maryanne's Pancakes
Makes about 10 4-inch pancakes
Recipe may be doubled

1 cup of flour

1 tablespoon of sugar

1 tablespoon baking powder

1 egg, beaten

1 cup of milk

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

In a large bowl, stir the flour, sugar, and baking powder together.  In a smaller bowl, beat the egg, milk, and oil together.  Stir the milk mixture into the flour mixture with a fork just long enough to make a smooth batter.  Set it aside for a few minutes to allow the baking powder to start to work.

Heat up a skillet until drops of water flicked off your fingers onto the skillet dance around and sizzle. If you have a non-stick or well-seasoned cast iron skillet, you will not need any grease, otherwise grease the skillet lightly.  Pour batter by the ladle onto the skillet and allow the pancakes to cook until the edges are kind of dry and the top surface is studded with little bubble craters.  Turn the pancakes and cook briefly to brown off the top.

Blueberry option: After the batter is mixed, stir in half a cup or more of blueberries.

It's National Milkshake Day!

You know what that means, right?

Well, it might mean something entirely different for you. For me, and Holyoke Community College, that means that today is Free Smoothie/Milkshake Day, sponsored by our Student Activities office and the folks at f'real Milkshakes and their rolling Milkshake Wagon. (Note: I have no idea if it's really called the Milkshake Wagon. It just sounded good.)

If you had been in line with me, you would have heard
students of all ages grumbling about wanting
that damn smoothie "NOW, DAMMIT."

f'real milkshakes started showing up this semester in HCC's cafeteria at a whopping $3.79 a pop, but you can find them using f'real's store finder and they'll cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $2.50.

So, are these milkshakes any good? In a word, yes. Creamy, smooth, and made with a thickness that you get to choose, these shakes start with ice cream in a cup and are blended to the way you want them. (More or less, of course. There's three settings to choose from: less thick, regular, and more thick. Less thick is a little runny, regular is like a standard milkshake, and more thick is more like the still-mostly-ice-cream 'shakes you get at McDonalds.)

Their smoothies are even better. Creamy, fruity, and subtly sweet, the smoothies are my favorite of the bunch. Made the same way as the shakes are, plug them into the machine, select your thickness, and away you go.

The smoothies and shakes are made with a standalone, ready-to-use blender that operates with a fully integrated LCD touchscreen. Its sensors know when you've placed a milkshake cup in it, and bring up the prompt for thickness. Select what you're craving, and that's it. Sometimes the screen plays an animation, sometimes it does something else like give company history or little trivia bits. Either way, in about 45 seconds, the machine is done and so is your shake. And the blender is self-cleaning after every blend, so you never have to worry about cross-shake contamination.

But seriously, with ten regular flavors from milkshakes to smoothies to frozen cappuccinos, and two limited edition flavors (Reese's peanut butter cup and mint chocolate) you really can't go wrong. You'll have a tasty smoothie or shake every time.

So go out there and celebrate National Milkshake Day. Go get a f'real shake and go make yourself happy.

Links:
f'real Main Website - the epicenter of delicious frozen drinks

Disclaimer: This is NOT a sponsored post. I'm not being paid by f'real Milkshakes for advertisement, or by Holyoke Community College. I just freaking LOVE milkshakes.

Marie Callender's Frozen Lasagna - And How ConAgra Dun Goof'd

Back in 2009 I did a comparative review of frozen lasagna, tasting and ranking eleven different products. Marie Callender's Meat lasagna was one of those products. I ranked it in the middle of the pack in the "Good" category - not outstanding, but not bad.  It was a little wet, a little salty, and much sparser with the cheese than the package art would suggest, but the sauce was fairly authentic-tasting, and I said I would buy it again if it were on sale.

Yesterday morning I stopped in ShopRite on my way to work, looking for a frozen meal I could take for lunch. I noticed that the Marie Callender's Lasagna label had changed - ConAgra was touting a new recipe and claiming that this new "three meat and four cheese" lasagna was "preferred over the leading meat lasagna." I decided to give it a try.  Little did I know while I was eating lunch and taking notes that this very product (or at least ConAgra's marketing of it) was starting to go viral.  More on that later - first, the review.

On the surface, very little has changed with Marie Callender's lasagna. It is still very wet and overly salty and the package art still hugely overrepresents the amount of cheese found in the pan.  There are still the same number of noodle layers, and they are still thick and a little tough.  There is no question that the recipe has changed, though.  The sauce is spicier, with a subtle but noticeable hot pepper kick.  And there is a heavy sprinkle of very green, very grassy-tasting parsley on top (so grassy-tasting, in fact, that it's almost distracting. Quite strange.)  The ingredients claim there to be three meats - pork, beef, and sausage - but I couldn't really tell which granules were which because all I could taste was the sausage.  I can't possibly understand how it can be "preferred over the leading meat lasagna," unless the leader is something really awful like Chef Boy-R-Dee Lasagna in a can.  If this Marie Callender's recipe had been on the market in 2009 when I wrote the original rankings, it would fall solidly in the "Unremarkable" category, below Boston Market's Lasagna With Beef Sauce.

So, given this totally "meh" product, what could ConAgra do with it that would cause them to take so much heat from bloggers?

As reported in the New York Times today, ConAgra tried to pull a fast one on a group of bloggers in New York City.  The bloggers were invited to try out an "intimate Italian restaurant" puportedly run by the host of TLC's Ultimate Cake Off, celebrity chef George Duran. What the bloggers didn't know was that they were actually served Marie Callender's new frozen lasagna while being taped by hidden cameras. The idea was to use what they hoped would be the diners' "OMG THIS IS FROZEN CRAP??? IT'S SO GOOD I THOUGHT I WAS EATING INTIMATE ITALIAN FOOD!!" reactions in an ad campaign.

The plan backfired, as explained here on the Brandnoise blog. Most of the bloggers involved are upset that they were tricked into eating mediocre frozen lasagna by the promise of a specially-prepared meal by a celebrity chef.  But some of them, I think, are most upset by not being able to tell the difference.  (In all fairness, however, the photos on Chubby's New York Food Diary [link no longer working] seem to indicate that there was more than a little food styling going on before the lasagna was plated and served.)

The end result? Most of the bloggers wouldn't sign the releases ConAgra needed to use their hidden camera footage and the NYC food blogosphere is abuzz with harsh feelings for the company and their PR firm. ConAgra, ya dun goof'd.

Mama Cozzi's Mega Meat Pizza

As promised on the box

I'm not a big fan of frozen pizza. There are too many genuinely good pizzerias in my area and too many fairly decent "take and bake" refrigerated pies in the supermarket for frozen pizzas to compete. Let's face it - when the majority of the frozen pizzas out there are on the horrid level of Mama Celeste or the equally nasty faux-gourmet crap of California Pizza Kitchen, you can see why I hardly ever look to the freezer case for a pizza fix.

And then yesterday I'm walking by the freezer cases at ALDI, and I saw this Mama Cozzi's Mega Meat Ultimate Five Meat Pizza box gazing up at me.  Props to the food stylist and photographer who worked on that label: that photo was irresistable. Seriously. It practically made my mouth water just looking at it.  And since we've had other Mama Cozzi's pizzas (the aforementioned take-and-bakes) without being disappointed,  Maryanne and I decided to give it a try.

As delivered from the oven.

For the most part, this pizza totally delivered on the photo's promise. There was capicola, pepperoni, sausage, "beef pizza topping (beef-and-TVP blend)," and bacon along with a decent amount of mozzarella and parmesan cheese.  The oven-rising crust was crispy on the bottom and pleasantly doughy below the sauce; not the type of pizza a New Haven pizza diehard would go for, but roughly comparable to a Western Massachusetts pizza crust (i.e. kind of halfway between a New Haven and a Sicilian style crust.)

Way better than the average frozen pizza, and under four bucks. Quite a deal. 

Vecchitto's Italian Ice, Middletown CT

Dekoven Drive in Middletown is a quiet two-lane road on the edge of the town. It runs parallel to Route 9, and as you travel 9 past the city, you can look at Dekoven and see a few billboards, a couple apartment buildings, some former industrial buildings, and a business or two as you go by.  One particular building stands out in a quietly unobtrusive way; a single-story red brick storefront nestled between two larger white structures. There's a sign over the door - Vecchitto's Italian Ice - and a couple of neon signs in the window. It's easy to drive past, but if you're paying attention you can take Exit 15 off of Route 9 (the sign says "66 West, Middletown, Marlboro,") hook a quick right after you get off of 9, and wind up right there at the door of Vecchitto's.  Do this, and you will find frozen happiness in a small paper cup.  Do this not, and you will be poorer for what you have missed.

The Vecchitto family have made and sold Italian Ices in the summer since 1930, here in Middletown and at another location at Sound View. (The shops are only open between Memorial Day and Labor Day.) At one time the family drove a vending truck through the streets, summoning children to the curb with a bell announcing that ices had arrived, but these days the customers come to the shop.  The Vecchittos are old friends to many of their customers, some of whom had enjoyed ices as children and are now bringing their own children and grandchildren there.

The store is a humble place. Behind the counter is a long freezer chest with doors in the top, and there's a cash register at one end.  On the right is another long freezer chest.  By the front window is a single small table and a few chairs. Most customers don't sit inside, though, they bring their ices outside to enjoy with the breeze from the Connecticut River as they slurp their frozen treats and watch the cars whiz by on Route 9.  There's a sign listing the flavors currently available, but if you have a special flavor in mind, just ask - sometimes they have a variety or two that hasn't made it to the board.

I took the family to Vecchitto's on opening day - this year, it was Saturday the 28th.  We got there about 1:30 in the afternoon and there was a steady stream of customers, though no lines or long waits.  As the summers deepens, it gets crazier near the shop with lines of people waiting for their ice fix and cars parked up and down the shoulders of Dekoven.  We ordered a variety of different flavors to sample across the boards and every one of them was completely awesome. Chocolate, rich and impossibly fudgy, almost like a slushy Tootsie Roll; Coconut, clean and smooth and fantastic; Blue Raspberry, fragrant with berry flavor and vanilla; Watermelon (one of Vecchitto's most popular flavors,) like a scoop of frozen fresh fruit; and Grape - remember the full-bodied Concord grape flavor of Welch's juice or Mountain Dew's Pitch Black? Yeah, like that.

Really, there is no Italian Ice anywhere that can compare to Vecchitto's. You would totally make your own day if you took a few minutes to stop by on your way through Middletown, but it is equally worthwhile to drive to Middletown just to get a scoop at Vecchitto's. 

You can even make it an awesome day trip if you want.  We made the ride special by driving to Middletown "the back way" - rather than taking I-91 south to Route 9, we got off 91 in Hartford and picked up Route 2, then traveled up scenic Route 17 to 17A (Main Street in Portland) and over the Arrigoni Bridge into Middletown.  On the way home, we detoured off of 17 in Glastonbury to Route 160, and took the ferry across the river to Rocky Hill, where we caught 91 North and came home again.

That ferry is the oldest continually-operated ferry crossing in the US. It started as a private enterprise in 1655 and was taken over by the State of Connecticut in 1915. Today, the Department of Transportation will bring your carload of people across the river on a ferry platform powered by a small tugboat, and all it will cost you is a drive through some of the prettiest scenery in the state and $3.00 for the fare (which is a bargain.)

Rita's Ice, Vernon CT

When you live in the Northern Connecticut / Western Massachusetts area, there are plenty of Italian-Americans, and this means that there are plenty of places to get Italian Ice.  Really AWESOME Italian Ice, in fact, like at Vecchitto's in Middletown CT or Albano's Grocery Store in Springfield MA, or Smyth's Soft Serve in Enfield. Each of these places have top-notch ice and they are my Italian Ice Destinations.  

But there are other places that also sell pretty decent Italian Ice as well and they deserve a shot, too. Places like Rita's Water Ice, a franchised ice/frozen custard store which has several Connecticut locations. We recently stopped in at the Vernon store, which is tucked in off to the side of the former Vernon Circle at 378 Kelly Road in Vernon. It's a seasonal location, only open from the end of March to the end of October.

Along with traditional flavors of ice, Rita's makes "special" flavors as well, often with a nod to pop culture. Lynnafred went for one of those flavors, ordering Swedish Fish ice, while I decided on the blue option and got a cup of Cotton Candy flavor.

Lynnafred's Swedish Fish flavor was perfectly authentic and just like eating Swedish Fish candies in frozen water ice form, right down to the slightly waxy flavor of the confection. I found it a little too agressively sweet for me, but that didn't surprise me because over the past few years my taste for sweets has somewhat diminished as I've been weaning myself away from sweet treats.  My Cotton Candy flavor was similarly excellent with it's vanilla/burnt sugar flavor and bright blue color; it was also less powerfully sweet though believe me, more than sweet enough.  Lynnafred had a taste and said she'd wished she'd gotten the cotton candy.  And though Maryanne passed on the ice in favor of a soft-serve vanilla frozen custard, she too was quite satisfied with her selection (a soft-serve fan since childhood, she's selective about ice creams and not hesitant to say when one doesn't meet with her approval.)

Now that the weather is getting hotter and a quick stop for an Italian Ice is blessed temporary respite from the oppressive weather, it's great to have a few places in mind when one is on the road.  Share your favorite Italian Ice shop in the comments.